


Sherlock is Sleeping At Last

by b00mgh



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sleeping At Last - Fandom
Genre: Atlas - Freeform, Ficlet, Multi, Ramblings, Woodwork, expect johnlock, expect parentlock, overture, sleeping at last
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-09-30 18:38:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 27,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Sherlock ficlets written to the band Sleeping At Last's album "Atlas."I will use and omit plot lines, plot points, and anything else that suits me, so beware.Good luck.





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZQ4V9J4DhM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV5hfXDMpr4

Sherlock isn’t sure how to feel about Rosamund Mary “Rosie” Watson, initially.

She was small and fragile and needy and distracts far too much of John’s time and attention than he was comfortable with; she was in a constant state of discordant noise and moved things randomly without prior permission or postliminary notification; she couldn’t be arsed to keep herself clean or safe and thus needed to be watched– typically by John– and she was entirely incapable of using her words to ask for things. 

But he was initially not tasked with frequent watch of her so he didn’t really have the interest to look far into it– her.

Sherlock isn’t sure how to feel about Rosamund Mary “Mary” Watson after her death, initially.

She had been lovely and strong and also far too distracting of John’s time and attention than he was comfortable with, but she had been helpful; she had been in a constant state of readiness and got closer to Sherlock randomly without any prior permission or postliminary notification, very similarly to her husband; she couldn’t have been arsed to keep herself protected or safe and thus needed to be worried about– by both John and Sherlock– and she was entirely incapable of using her words to ask for help, even when she really needed it. He felt guilt and loss and anguish and a sudden craving for drugs again.

But he was suddenly tasked with frequent watchings of her daughter so he didn’t have the time to look far into it– her.

What he discovered filled hallways of his mind palace; Rosie was as lovely and strong as her mom, and was a welcome distraction to both Sherlock and John; she was in a constant state of emotion and Sherlock got very close to her randomly without prior permission or postliminary notification, not that the girl minded; she did her best to be as fearless and brave as her mother and father, whether that meant following Sherlock wherever he went on all fours or holding back tears when she bumped her head on the corner of the coffee table, and thus garnered endless adoration– from anyone who met her– and was endeavoring herself entirely to the acquisition of words. He felt renewed and exhausted and loved and a lack of craving for those drugs.

And he had a lifetime to get to know her.


	2. Woodwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZQ4V9J4DhM

Heartbeats sounded much more tenuous than they should. After something terrifying and devastating, your heart should be slamming vociferously. It should be so loud you have to panic for a second because that’s all you can hear but it sounded shy and anxious inside Sherlock’s chest.

An earthquake had happened.

They’d been on their way to the plane where Sherlock would leave for ‘6 months’, and an earthquake had hit. 

The natural disaster itself wasn’t really as disastrous as one would think, the aftermath of crazed humans had been the real disaster. Imbeciles.

A large sedan had slammed into their rear, propelling them into the cab in front, some smaller silver car had skidded next to them and voila! Sandwiched against the blocks at the edge of the road. A rock and a hard place, if one is in the mood for puns.

The damage to the front of the car is the least, with just a dented hood; the boot is entirely unrecognizable as anything other than a mockery of an accordion; the side where the car had run against their side was the worst, it was compressed inwards alarmingly. It was a good thing they no longer needed a ride because the cab driver was dead or very close to it. 

Sherlock felt glad he was on that side, tenuous heartbeat or not, because– 

And he remembered why he was straining so hard not to focus on his heartbeat or his breathing: he was listening for someone else’s.

Sirens sound in the distance but louder than that is a quiet, breathy sound of lungs searching for air amongst polluted wreckage. With feeble fingers that feel like they’ve forgotten how to feel, he inches his hand on top of another, climbing to the wrist to check for those same tenuous heartbeats that sat in another chest. They exist, and an emotionally and physically painful, sigh of relief interrupts things.

“Sh’r… Sherlock?” John is awake in seconds, blinking rapidly to clear his thoughts. “Sherlock?” He says it more clearly this time.

“John, good morning.”

“Ha, bloody, ha.” An angst-ridden pause, “Are you okay?” Warmer, rougher fingers mimic the more slender ones and find a vein to assess the heartbeat. “Jesus, your pulse… How long was I down?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve just woken up myself. There’s been a car accident, though.” 

“I’d noticed.” The two finally meet eyes and there is a moment of assessing each other.

Sherlock is able to document a dislocated knee, a broken toe, whiplash, and several bruises and abrasions.

John tries to document something but he’s just noticed his consulting detective is leaking. 

“Sherlock. You’re bleeding.”

Ice blue eyes do a quick self-assessment. “It seems I am.”

There is the smallest whine of fear when John demands “The adrenaline keeping you numb now won’t last long, where are you bleeding from?” His eyes are searching, frantic, and his adrenaline has begun to wear off so his face contorts in suffering. The degradation from panic to pain is slow, however, so he manages to leave it aside for the moment.

There’s no response, though, Sherlock’s eyes have gone glassy and vacant. “Don’t you fucking mind-palace me right now.” John huffs, scooting over with an intense amount of pain that registers in a slowness of movement and stifled man-screams. His hands ghost over the spots where the bleeding is heaviest until he locates glass from the shattered windshield in Sherlock’s arm and an errant scrap of metal sticking awkwardly from the side of the car stretching obscenely into Sherlock’s side. 

Helpfully, this is terrifying enough to give John a bit more of that nice, numbing adrenaline. He rips off his jumper and creates a tourniquet for the arm with one sleeve, and a wrap for the side with the rest of the sweater. He ties it tight because he’s not sure if he has the strength to keep pressure on it, and there’s no nurse to help him this time.

The sounds of sirens escalate, which is hopeful, but not immediately helpful.

He takes the pulse, counts those tenuous heartbeats, without a watch because John’s watch is broken. When he goes to pull his hand back there is a knee-jerk reflex that makes Sherlock grip tighter and this seems to bring him to reality.

“John.”

“Yes.”

“John.”

“Sherlock, what’s wrong?”

“John I need to tell you something–”

“Oh, god– no, Sherlock, we’re not doing this. You don’t get to–”

“I love you, John.” The grip on the hand has gotten tight enough to turn knuckles white. “I meant to tell you, I’ve always meant to tell you but I never did. I, uh, I was… stupid.” A deep baritone voice lets out a bitter laugh. “I’m sorry, John, I should have done things… differently, I should have told you after I came home, I should have told you before Reichenbach, or after the hounds, or when Moriarty– I should have told you that night at Angelo’s when you asked if I had a boyfriend.” The laugh has been matted down to an emotionally and physically agonized huff of air, but it’s the thought that counts.

A deep breath comes from John. “You… absolute arsehole.”

If the face wasn’t so deeply heartbroken, Sherlock would look offended.

“You don’t get to tell me  _ that _ as you lay here dying in a bloody car wreck! You’re supposed to tell me that when–… I don’t know, any other time.  _ Any _ other time, you’re supposed to say that.”

“Timing?” Sherlock whispers faintly, if one listened carefully, one could hear the bleeding of a heart left torn.

“My god, Sherlock, of course I love you, you idiot. Now if you want to prove you love me you stay alive– use that big brain of yours to find some way to keep you alive– and let’s get out of here  _ together _ .”

The contortion of the face evolved from despair to contentment, and icy eyes closed happily.

“What did I just say?” John demands, voice rising in anxious pitches. “You  _ stay alive _ , Sherlock Holmes. If you die, I’ll never forgive you, I’ll never forgive myself, and I’ll never forgive the world.” A choked-up feeling inundates John’s words, and he manages to say “If you die, I’ll kill myself.”

That got someone’s attention. Sherlock was actually seriously feeling all those stabs, so he couldn’t say much, but his eyelids shot open and he said “Ridiculous.” 

“I swear to god I’ll do it.”

“No…”

“You’re brother knows what happened after Reichenbach, ask him if I’ll do it.”

“John.” Tears were welling and spilling.

The little military man was prone to the contagiousness of crying and he struggled to maintain his composure. “If you want me alive, you stay here and make sure of it yourself. Can you do that?”

A nod, slow but with incipient determination. 

“I’m going to need–… This’ll work.” A makeshift flag is fashioned from the rubber floor protector and John squeezes out the window on his side to place it on top, well in view of paramedics. His leg and toes scream and he is really fighting the urge to join them but he channels it constructively and both shouts and bangs on the roof of the car until an EMT sees him and turns to address an older officer. 

Slithering back into the car, John takes Sherlock’s limp wrist and finds that tenuous heartbeat with his fingers, a sentiment Sherlock reciprocates with an exhausted desperation. 

The paramedics find them much easier after all John’s ruckus and they pair are pulled free from the car’s mechanical, awful clutches. The only time John drops Sherlock’s hand is when he is wheeled into the operating theater. 


	3. I'll Keep You Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHXa85SOWtk

John doesn't feel safe. He's sitting on the floor somewhere, surrounded by people and lights and music, all of it is terribly confusing and he swears there is rain pouring out of the slimy floor. It occurs to him at some point that he's screaming even though no one can hear him, the electronic beats are blaring so loud he can't hear himself. That's where Sherlock literally stumbles across him. He almost steps on his hand, which startles John into silence and that silence is what really catches Sherlock's attention.    
Looking down, he recognizes a familiar face stained with tears and glitter. "John?" His voice is lost in the drop of a bass and the cries of elation that accompany it from the mouths of young girls who've had too much to drink. As far as John is concerned, the screams are visible things that look more like ghosts than screams and he is crying because he has entirely lost control of his mental faculties and perception of reality. Sherlock is familiar with the expression on the smaller man's face.    
Gently, but firmly, Sherlock lifts John by the arms and hustled him out the back door with threatening glares cast towards anyone who dared to stare.  "I'll keep you safe." He says, quietly. He didn't want anyone else to hear it, but John heard it anyway. He feels dizzy with elation.    
They get outside the club and John collapses to the ground next to a dumpster in relief. "Try hard to concentrate," Sherlock continues, and he's using a hand holding John's chin to make the shorter man stare blankly into his eyes, "hold out your hand." He commands, gently. John follows instruction, and Sherlock presses down on his palm. "Can you feel the weight of it?"    
John can feel a weight, certainly. It's the weight of the world at his fingertips: the weight of grief and of hidden tears and of longing and of reckless need without submission to it, a helpless struggle of an existence.    
John feels helpless. He's so intoxicated he can't tell which way is up except for Sherlock's voice.    
There is a hand on his arm and he nearly jumps out of his skin. "Don't be-- don't be afraid." There's that voice, the one that's keeping him right.    
"Sherl'k, I'm sorry." He slurs, and honestly he's terrified out of his mind and he means it. He can make out icy eyes melting in front of him, all that ice melting out of Sherlock's face and pooling in the ground and oh my god /he's melting/! He screams something that can barely be construed as language. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He whispers in catatonic atonement.    
The hand leaves his arm and rests on the side of his face instead. "Our mistakes..." Sherlock tries to reassure John, "they were bound to be made."    
An angry shadow emerges from the blackness between the top of Sherlock's head and the dark night behind him and he whimpers pitifully. "I promise you I'll keep you safe." Suddenly a brick wall erects itself between the pair sitting on the asphalt and the angry shadow.    
Brick walls come up all around, not the kind that trap you like the walls of the club they'd been in not long ago, but the kind that would make up a house, the kind that protect and comfort. With a feverish smile, John says "You'll be an architect..."   
Not really understanding, Sherlock requested that John "Pull up your sleeves?" He got a response obligingly.    
Meanwhile, John had drifted further from reality. He saw another shadow rising off the ground lithely. Another ghost of his past. "Built a new silhouette," there were more shadows rising too, an army of them coming from the black horizon, "from the skyline up ahead." He reached out one arm to point haphazardly at the barrage of attackers.    
"Don't be," Sherlock mutters, and looks to where John's shaking arm is pointing, "don't be afraid." It becomes quickly apparent that John has no intention of being helpful this time though, so Sherlock tries to assuage his imagined phantoms "Those mistakes, they were bound to be made. And I promise you I'll keep you safe." Now John is sobbing, trying not to look around because he can't trust his eyes anymore, covering his ears with both hands because he feels like it might help with the searing pain in his head. More to himself this time, Sherlock whispers "I'll keep you safe."    
He coaxes john to a stand, and takes him slowly, at a snails pace, to the nearest road, where he hails a taxi and pays in advance with a request to drive slowly and carefully.    
About halfway through the ride, John takes to staring at Sherlock, reverently. He murmurs in a tone that might be intended as conciliatory "Your darkness will be rewritten into a work of fiction, you'll see." Several minutes later he adds in a more idolatry voice "You pull every ribbon to find out each secret they keep." He repeats both of these at approximately five minute intervals and Sherlock can't make heads or tails as to what the hell it means.    
When they finally arrive at home, without any tea waiting because Mrs. Hudson has gone to bed-- and it is only then that Sherlock realizes it is past four am-- the ex drug addict convinces the drugged man to come up the stairs. He reassures that there are no spiders under the floorboards because the spiders John is talking about are both much too large to fit under floorboards and only inhabit deserts. He helps him up each stair, even the eleventh and twelfth ones that are sworn up and down to be on fire. He settles him into his chair without need for rationale because even a drugged inhabitant of 221B Baker Street remembers the chairs. He doesn't make any tea because he is too scared that John might run off while he's gone or be spooked by the noise of the kettle.    
He knows he used to get spooked by that.    
He asks John in a moment of semi-lucidity what he can remember.    
"The sound of branches breaking under your feet, the smell of the falling--..." and then the drugs take him back for another run "the burning of leaves. The bitterness of winter, the sweetness of spring." This is definitely drugs talking because it is October and definitely not spring or winter. With sudden ferocity, John leans forward and claws at a spot on Sherlock's chest, just between his collar bone and his sternum. "You are an artist." John insists loudly, tears welling in his eyes again. "Your heart is your masterpiece." Sherlock refrains from pointing out that he missed the heart. John takes his hand back and presses it to an identical spot on his own chest, a few inches from the heart. "And I'll keep it safe." Then the significance of the gesture hits: John wasn't aiming for the heart, he was pointing to where his scar is, the scar that sent him to London and to Sherlock.    
Then he starts trying not to scream because apparently the windows are breaking and the clocks are running backwards and the clockmaker won't come to fix them.    
The poor man's ramblings seem to fixate on the clocks, however few of them are actually in he flat, and he seems to have some burning need to make sure Sherlock hears him because he is looking frantically back and forth between the empty middle ground and the detective's confused eyes.    
It takes around seven and a half minutes for Sherlock to understand, "Dismiss the invisible... by giving it shape!" Of course it had been right under his nose the whole time. The drugs, it had been the drugs. He cries, "Like a clockmaker, fixing time and keeping the gears in line!" If the witnesses were all drugged it was almost like there were no witnesses at all. Clever. He jumps up excitedly, sort of forgetting John's state. This makes the man in the chair shrink back in confused terror "No! Don't be- don't be afraid." He whispers, kneeling down. He halfway grins at their stupidity before now, but how could they have known before? There had to have been some way to have seen through I before John became implicated. "God knows these mistakes will be made." He isn't sure whether this is reassuring to John or himself, but it serves more for himself since John is again preoccupied with hallucinations popping out of the wallpaper. "But I promise you I'll keep you safe." He adds, and this is also partly for his own benefit.    
Again John insists "You are an artist, and your heart is your masterpiece..." he's mumbling it almost like a prayer, as if he could say it enough and be right and sober again-- and wouldn't that be a relief, because Sherlock doesn't know what else to do besides be there and try to ground John in reality.    
Almost as much a prayer as John's rambling, Sherlock murmurs "I'll keep you safe."    
In the morning comes the hangover of a lifetime and little memory of what happened for John, and the exhaustion of having stayed up all night accompanied by the most watchful eye possible for Sherlock. All John can really imagine happened comes from the bits and pieces he recalls; a needle shoved into his wrist, shadows getting deeper and darker, all-encompassing dread, and a deep voice telling him he'd be safe.    
John feels safe.


	4. Bad Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwH33eS1DcE

No one expects or prepares or laments over a ruined childhood often times because those closest affected don't really realize what they missed. These children had what they considered, until such a time as they were shown otherwise, normal childhoods. If mommy was an alcoholic, then that must be normal; maybe everyone's mommy drank half a case of beer by herself every night and threw plates if approached. If father told you to go to your room the second he got home and didn't let you come out, then that has to be typical; surely everyone's father tacitly told them they were unwanted and not to be bothered with. This doesn't make the children love the parents less because as far as they know this is how parents are.    
  
John Hamish Watson's mother was a gorgeous woman, whose looks he did not inherit: auburn hair in ringlet curls and cheekbones protruding from a face thin both by nature of genetics and nurture of an untreated eating disorder with incisive eyes that were a hazy shade of blue-grey. It didn't matter that her manic-depressive episodes led to frequent screaming matches with his drunk father, she was the most beautiful mom John could ever hope for. He loved her when she cursed at him and when she begged for his forgiveness for cursing at him. She never got physical with her abuse, that was his dad's part time job, but that almost made it worse because as John grew older and wiser and able to make his own judgements, the fact that she had never physically struck him made it harder to acknowledge what she'd done as abuse.    
He did, eventually, internally, and with much difficulty, have a face-off with what she'd done to him. It ended with him telling himself that it wasn't right but that she did her best. She'd had a mental disorder and an alcoholic husband, one couldn't expect her to be a fully functioning parent on top of that.    
This was when he'd been on tour in Afghanistan, and then he'd been shot, sent home, yadda yadda yadda. When he became a parent to a beautiful baby girl named Rosie, and after Mary died, and after all the terrible things around him began to secede, John reconsidered this ruling.    
Sherlock had Aspergers-- or sociopathy or whatever he wanted to call it-- and John was grueling through the loss of a wife, and neither of them had done anything that would make things hard for Rosie.    
Sherlock basically redefined for John what a good father, a good  _ parent _ , should look like. He was gentle and strong and reassuring at all the right junctures. He looked up anything he wasn't sure about on no less than three reputable web sources. He allowed Rosie to make her own mistakes while still watching out for her safety. He comforted John when he was absolutely certain he had to be screwing everything up.    
So John thought that Sherlock must have had a rather good childhood.    
He was wrong.    
Sherlock's father had been a distant one, constantly telling all three Holmes siblings to go outside or to their rooms or somewhere where he wasn't. There was little bonding because he simply didn't seem interested in it, which showed in the varying degrees of reactive attachment disorder in all three siblings. Their mother certainly wasn't going to fill any gaps. Sherlock's mother had been less stable when he was young, a bit of a loose cannon. She was prone to fits of restless annoyance for all who crossed her, and children were, as far as she was concerned, useless if not at an equal intelligence to herself. She occasionally suffered paranoid delusions and it took years to find a medication that could help and that she was willing to take-- and by that time there were no kids left to benefit from the reduced household anxiety.    
Eurus got into murder, Sherlock got into drugs, Mycroft got into power. All three had their poison but only Sherlock's path led him to John Watson-- whose easygoing laugh replaced the echoes of his mother's maniacal cackle, whose warm smiles overwrote the feverish grins of his overwrought father, whose physical contact was neither a knuckle-white clutch nor a shove in the other direction but a soft reassurance of intention. John basically redefined what a good person could look like for Sherlock.    
He was never given the pleasure of assuming a happy young life for the Watson siblings. He could see the scars of abuse written in the third degree burn on his left bicep and the nervous way he dealt with those he assumed were above him. But this was the person who had shown him life and love so when he had a baby and no more mother to help him and a terrified expression settling into his face, Sherlock revised the vows he'd made and set himself to work as best as he could.    
He researched everything there was to be researched about childcare and he read first person accounts from many parents and he comforted John and he exuded confidence all the while because he had to. He'd failed and he'd been failed and so it was time to give one child-- even if it was just the one-- a good and happy childhood. There would be no excuses she'd have to make for any abuse and no pain that she'd have to unnecessarily bear. She would just get to grow up with parents functioning as what parents should be: loving catchers for when she falls and kind roots for her to blossom from.    
They were both a home to go back to and a nest to leave, but never were they a burden for her to bear. Rosie Watson grew up loving both her fathers with all her heart, and she never had a reason to doubt them, as far as she knew.


	5. Uneven Odds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytn5FhI3Qwg

His two friends are dead to him in different senses of the word: Mary literally and John metaphorically. In both cases he supposes he won't see them for several months, although which one he sees is entirely up to him.    
One loose end Sherlock feels the need to tie up before he loses all contact with the Watsons is Rosie: he actually adores her and refuses to leave her life without a formal explanation and apology. She deserves that much, he killed her mother.    
Molly delivers John's message, and it takes almost fifteen minutes of pleading and explaining in addition to her being out of coffee to get her to let him watch Rosie while she goes to the store. The marginally intelligent woman she is, Molly knows that Sherlock won't do anything to Rosie, just like she knows that John can't last long without Sherlock in equal comparison to the opposite.    
The detective estimates seventeen and a half minutes before Molly comes back to kick him out and so he sits down across from Rosie on the floor with his legs crossed and casts his eyes down to his hands in guilt.    
"I know--" he pauses and corrects himself "I once knew your father well." He told the baby. "And he was... last time I saw him he was fighting tears in the hospital, talking about your mother's health. And I guess a part of him just couldn't return." He took a deep breath to steady himself because Rosie was staring right at him with intelligence she couldn't possess at her age, but it felt like she knew what he was saying, it looked like she understood him and this whole awful situation was too much and maybe drugs were a good plan again but not now because he still has to explain to Rosie and he's running out of time. "Forgiveness is a sin he cursed you to learn. Because we both know your dad and he has a hard time with things like that, he's loyal to a fault and now I'm at the sharp end of that blade, aren't I?"    
Rosie responded eloquently with "Da." Whether she recognized her father as the subject matter or whether she was agreeing with Sherlock is ambiguous.    
Either way, it was enough to light a broken chuckle in Sherlock's chest and he explained "When I was your guardian, I was instructed well, mostly by your mother if you can believe it, to make sense of love even in the fires of hell." At this Rosie's little head cocked sideways, and most probably that was to get a better look at Molly coming down the front stairs but to Sherlock she looked like she was empathizing with his paradoxical instructions. "I don't expect you to understand, he'll I don't understand what that means! But--... just live what life your broken heart can." He finally and very very tentatively picked her up, having heard Molly unlocking the front door, and whispered "I'm sorry, love" into her blonde curls. Then he handed her off to an exhausted Molly and waved his goodbye.    
  
As the years moved on, and the people with them, questions took shape of answers.    
"Can I?" Became "Of course."   
"Will you?" Became "Sure."   
"Please?" Became "I love you."   
It's the anniversary of her death, ten years later, and Sherlock can't help but still feel an aching, fearful tremor when he sees Mary's picture settled with the skull on the mantle.    
"Are we getting stronger or is time shifting weight?" He muses quietly, worrying at the wedding ring on his finger.    
With the same stability he's almost always had, John settles himself leaning against the arm of Sherlock's chair. "Well that's something we can't expect to understand," he responds, absently, resting a hand over his husband's, "we'll just live what life our mending hearts can." He sighed somberly, squeezing Sherlock's hand and gravely assuring "We'll always remember the moment she was taken away."   
"The weight of the world was put on your shoulders that day." Sherlock added, sounding guilt-ridden and exhausted all at once.    
John, with a mild ferocity he'd been putting away lately, murmured "Don't. You know there wasn't anything you could have done then, or anything you could have done better afterwards."   
It's a constant war, because neither of them can ever convince the other, but one that is healing like pink scar tissue.    
"I love you, John."   
"Love you too, Sherlock. Now come get in bed before I finish my book waiting for you."


	6. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNoMeKCn0x4

LIGHT

 

There were a lot of long days in the hospital after Sherlock was shot by Mary. For the doctors, there were days when the doctors were sure he was just the right motivator away from waking up and days where they doubted he would ever open his eyes again, but John didn’t really listen to them very much after they said whatever they specifically came to say. For John there were days he talked endlessly about anything and days he couldn’t piece a sentence together, but it seemed like the man inside the body on the bed was as vacant as John felt. He never stirred, didn’t so much as twitch a finger, the lazy bastard.

Still, because they were as close as one can heterosexually (or homosexually, for that matter) explain the relationship of two men, John visited basically constantly. When Mrs. Hudson or Greg Lestrade or Molly or Mycroft visited, the one room fixture they could count on as reliably as the heart monitor was John– who one could argue performed the same function.

This arrangement left a lot of time for introspection, things like ‘What could I have done better?’ and ‘Why didn’t I see this coming earlier?’ and ‘You selfish arsehole, wake the bloody hell up before I storm out of this room.’ 

There was this one song the nurses kept playing that really started to get to John though, because it was a little creepy how relatable he found it, as sappy as it was. He found himself humming it in the seconds stolen at work or on those days where words were just impossible. It said:

“May these words be the first to find your ears,” and he really started to wish that any words were reaching Sherlock’s ears.

“The world is brighter than the sun now that you’re here. Though your eyes will need some time to adjust to the overwhelming light surrounding us,” the London sky didn’t necessarily clear up because John met Sherlock, but it might as well have. The before and after was like night and day, as soon as the detective in the Belstaff  winked at John in the basement of Bart’s Hospital there was this snap. As if all of a sudden someone took off a pair of sunglasses John had been stupid enough to wear indoors and suddenly there were worlds of detail he’d missed.

“I’ll give you everything I have, I’ll teach you everything I know, I promise I’ll do better,” Sherlock taught John a great many things– 243 specific types of tobacco ash, how to spot a pilot by the left thumb, how to recognize a cheating spouse– that did not mean the man was smarter than John. John had to teach Sherlock things like how to tell someone their wife is dead and the timing of saying it was all someone’s fault. Was it a pain in the ass to be both parent and child and friend to some man-baby who is as likely to throw a shoe at you as he is to save your life? Fuck yes. But John really wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I will always hold you close but I will learn to let you go, I’ll do better,” there was undeniable jealousy between John and Sherlock whenever a female was thrown into the mix– before Mary anyway. Not necessarily anything romantic, because John is certainly ‘not gay’, but jealousy all the same, and there was an art to letting go those you loved. A tough-ass art that didn’t have a whole lot of personal benefits, but humans need space so you need to let them have space. Apparently he gave Sherlock too much space this time.

“I will soften every edge and hold the world to it’s best, I’ll do better,” as much as his job was to protect the world from Sherlock Holmes, it was also to protect Sherlock Holmes from the world. As much as the detective would like to pretend he’s this stoic batman who can take on the whole world alone, he is not and cannot. Anderson gets to him some days, Donovan can be incisive on occasion, the threat of Moriarty somehow coming back had the capacity to break him down once in awhile, Magnussen is such an oppression on his morale John once needed to drag him out of the flat to his and Mary’s house to get him to calm down. The man needed a shock absorber, and if nothing else John can be steadfast.

“With every heartbeat I have left I will defend your every breath, and I’ll do better,” and of course, of course of course of course, there was the promise of “I’ll do better.” Because John was, as far as he knew, never enough. In his opinion he was incapable of doing well at most things and barely sufficient in others. Such is the personal price of living with a genius: inferiority.

“You are loved, You are loved more than you know and I hereby pledge all of my days to prove it so,” the stubborn idiot for some reason couldn’t see it, but John wasn’t Sherlock’s only friend. It felt  nice to be appreciated so much, but he also had Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and Molly, if not Mycroft. Mary might have counted too if John wasn’t recalling this in a hospital room.

“Though your heart is far too young to realize the unimaginable light you hold inside,” it’s around this point in the tune that John realizes he has been quietly, actually, seriously, literally singing it out loud, and that two blue eyes are looking back at him pointedly.

“I didn’t know you liked to sing, John.” Sherlock says, voice hoarse from disuse (and thank god for that because it is all that reminds John not to  _ tackle him and beat him to death again) _ .

John settles for “You absolute bastard.”


	7. You Are Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX3lvwks7NU

John Watson has depression, clinically diagnosed if not personally accepted. The therapist isn’t sure if the PTSD predisposed it or vice versa or if they just both are there, but he does have major depressive disorder. No one except him and those it was necessary to have know (this description includes his therapist, who diagnosed it, and Sherlock Holmes, who deduced it tacitly). He doesn’t like to admit weakness or accept defeat though, so he sort of just ignored the diagnosis and his therapist’s urgings for medication, at one point threatening to quit coming to sessions if she persisted. 

Now all of this was good and fine until he had a best friend who actually seriously cared and also knew something was wrong. There was a ‘don’t fix it if it isn’t broken’ approach taken before, but Sherlock was both experienced with depression and a very overprotective man– and sure John wasn’t broken but that didn’t mean he wasn’t stuck in a hole without a rope. So on a hot day in London’s muggiest of summers, when John could be easily seen by trained eyes to be in the darkest spot of a long black streak [ _ downcast eyes, mumbling, self-depreciating comments, not wanting to get out of the house, no tea drank in 24 hours, not eating, not sleeping, not talking, limp returning _ ], Sherlock sent him away.

He claimed he was in the middle of a very important experiment that would make the flat smell like molding thumbs for a month if he was interrupted, and that Lestrade [ _ Gavin, Geoff, Gump, Geodude? _ ] had something for him which John could easily handle. All of this yelled out the door whilst he furiously texted from his room. 

Sherlock could hear him grumble, fall out of bed, get dressed with reasonable speed and absolutely no precision, then brush his teeth and head out. No request of what the salient case details were, no tea, no food, just grumblings and then gone. Disheartening.

 

The moment John arrived at the scene of the crime, Lestrade approached with a breathless gait and an exasperated expression. “John, thank god, you have no idea what kind of shit I’m dealing with.”

“What?” Is all John can really manage to get in edgewise.

“I’m trying to make sure this new kid on forensics doesn’t screw all the evidence up and the sister just got here and she wants to see her brother’s body, but it’s already with Molly at the morgue and then the press think this is somehow more noteworthy than other crime scenes– I’m up to my neck!”

With a slow pause to make sure Greg was done, John asks “Isn’t this where you’d want Sherlock, then?”

The detective looks a little taken aback by John’s lack of apparent confidence, “No. You’re enough.” He asserts. And that sort of makes John feel a little warm inside. “Could you, you know, see what you can get from the crime scene? Try to piece together a theory? I’m stumped and if Anderson tries to say it was the sister  _ one more time–... _ .” He wanders off to console the press, running a weathered hand through silvery hair.

Sort of rudderless without a genius by his side, John wanders off too; he looks at the blood sprayed down the alleyway [ _ aorta severed _ ] and the angle of the chalk outline where the body was found [ _ cause of death: blood loss _ ] and the debris found all around. A golden wedding ring of mediocre size was found under a dumpster _ [intentionally removed, motive: marriage related _ ]. There were traces of the fabric from the man’s clothing all around where the body had been, mostly jean threads and one metal button [ _ pants forcefully removed, signs of struggle: possibility of rape _ ]. Whatever the murder weapon had been [ _ most likely a sharp kitchen knife from the clean spray of blood _ ], it was with the body, being tested in the forensics lab at Bart’s. Anything further would require a trip there.

“You got anything?” Greg quanders, making John jump a little at the surprise entrance.

With a shrug, John mumbles “Sort of, yeah. Need a bit more background before I get anything too solid.” 

Lestrade grins widely, “Great, thanks mate. I’ll see you when you’ve figured it out, yeah?” John nods nervously and turns to go get a cab.

More than thinking about how much he’d like to go home or how much could go wrong or how much he should be upset, John is scribbling in his journal about all sorts of possible connections and theories.

As he walks into Bart’s Hospital, he shoots a text to Sherlock:

  
_  
_

_ Case is interesting, you’d get it done faster. Lestrade is having a hard time.  _

_ -JW _

 

_ Experiment more important, you’ll solve it. Isn’t he always?  _

_ -SH _

 

_ Heading to the morgue now. Really could use your help  _

_ -JW _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_  
_

_ Give the corpse my regards.  _

_ -SH _

  
  


John thinks Sherlock is being a stubborn prick, and he’s half right. 

Molly smiles as owlishly as ever, she shows John the corpse– a wiry man not older than 35– and informs John she’s stepping out to grab some crisps. 

“Wouldn’t it be better to call Sherlock for this part?” John calls after her, his face screwing up slightly in perturbed befuddlement.

Molly gives him a nonplussed look, “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” Her eyes narrow in a smirk as she adds “If you can find the problems in living people, you’re more than enough to find the problems in dead ones.” The door shut behind her and John is left feeling out-of-sorts. He’d never done anything to show Molly he was or wasn’t capable– not that he knew of– so how could she trust him to do well here? He must be missing something.

Still, there was things that needed done and it was already nearly noon; his stomach had begun to politely clear its throat in request of sustenance, but it wouldn’t be so amiable for long. 

The body showed bruising around the neck, wrists, ankles, and pelvis [ _ rape confirmed, definite sign of struggle, knew the attacker _ ]. Obviously there was a deep incision just above the heart, it was hastily done, but still a clean cut [ _ definitely a long kitchen knife with fairly thin blade _ ]. The only other notable thing on the body was the lipstick stains on his neck and face [ _ female perpetrator, very tall or wearing tall shoes _ ]. He was crossing off and adding suspect ideas when Molly ambled back in with a bag of crisps half eaten. 

“Oh, hello, John. Find what you need then?” She asked, chipper after eating a snack.

His brow furrowed inquisitively. “Mostly,” he told her, “but could I ask you something?” The pathologist nodded over a mouthful of crunchy deliciousness. “Had this man been drugged? Any drugs in his system at all?” 

Another nod, then Molly swallowed and gave a more complete reply. “Yeah, roofies, how’d you know?”

“Lucky guess. I’ve got to get going, you’ve been a huge help, thanks Molly.”

“But I didn’t even–” John was hurrying out the door already, and Molly finished her sentence without an audience “–do anything…” She crumpled her face in mildly concerned expression before wiping off her fingers and pulling out her phone to text Sherlock.

 

The next few stops were full of people that were either bathetic or affronted, but that all gave John the same general information. He stopped for a quick meal to condense his findings and amalgamate them with his thoughts. It was nearing the late evening, graying colors of dusk settling down for the night, and he hadn’t eaten all day (or the previous day for that matter, but he wouldn’t tell anyone that). With a mouth full of chips, he sent Sherlock another text:

  
  


_ I think it’s the cousin. _

_ -JW  _

 

_ Oh. _

_ -SH _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ She and the victim were apparently close when they were younger (like really really close), and she wasn’t happy when he got hitched. _

_ -JW _

 

_ I see. _

_ -SH _

 

_ You’d still solve it faster. That experiment must be really important. _

_ -JW _

 

_ Unless you want the flat smelling like barbecue toenails, I’ll proceed with my experiment. _

_ -SH _

 

_ Fair enough. _

_ -JW _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


As much as he wasn’t conscious of it, without a doubt John Watson was starting to feel back to himself again, he walked with a bit more of a pep in his step and less of a worry about the gun he’d tucked into his waistband.

It was quiet on the way to the home of his main suspect, she lived on an out-of-the-way street that he walked to, as opposed to taking a cab (the man isn’t made of money and it wasn’t that far). When he got to the door and knocked, a loud  _ THUMP _ and several smaller consecutive  _ thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump _ noises could be heard. As much as he expected it to be an incorrigible cat or something, he shot another text at Sherlock:

  
  


_ Weird noises coming from cousins flat. Might need to call for backup. Call Lestrade if I haven’t said anything in half an hour. Should be fine though. _

_ -JW _

 

_ *cousin’s _

_ -SH _

 

_ Wait _

_ -SH _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ What _

_ -SH _

 

_ I am not worried. _

_ -SH _

 

_ But you still shouldn’t go in there. _

_ -SH _

 

_ John. _

_ -SH _

 

_ It’s been six and a half minutes, should I call Lestrade? _

_ -SH _

 

_ Don’t make me give up on this experiment and make the house smell like rotting corpses. _

_ -SH _

 

_ I’ll do it. You know I don’t care. _

_ -SH _

 

_ Okay I lied, I am mildly worried. In my defense it’s been eight minutes. _

_ -SH _

 

_ I’ll tell Lestrade your middle name. _

_ -SH _

 

_ I’ll tell Mycroft your middle name. _

_ -SH _

 

_ Send ambulance _

_ -JW _

 

_ Why _

_ -SH _

 

_ Done. _

_ -SH _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ I’m coming now what’s the address? _

_ -SH _

 

_ Nevermind I’m tracking your phone. _

_ -SH _

 

_ Are you okay? _

_ -SH _

 

_ please john say something im on the way i promise _

_ -SH _

 

_ Im going to be very angry with you if your not okay _

_ -SH _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


In the cab on the way to whatever hell hole John was in, Sherlock felt ill, but John had absolutely no way of knowing this, or answering his phone, since he was in some hell hole trying to stop a woman from bleeding to death in her cousin-in-law’s stairwell. Certainly there was an upside in that John found the killer, but then there was the downside that the confirmation he got was in the form of finding her in the middle of stabbing the original victim’s envied wife. The killer had been downed by the butt of John’s handy browning, and was unconscious in the sitting room, not tied up or anything because there wasn’t really time to lose with that sort of thing when one is attempting to stop the blood flow of a halfway-severed aorta. It’s almost surprising to him when the ambulance arrives because ‘ _ Sherlock actually took my text seriously instead of ignoring it like a prick!’  _

John keeps intense pressure on the wound he’s been trying to stave off the bleeding off until there is an EMT right next to him ready to take his place. “Is there anything I can do?” He asks a one man as the other two settle a gurney into the back of the ambulance. 

“Not at all, sir you’ve done more than enough. From what my guys are saying she has a shot because of you.” And damn if that didn’t take a few of the darker shadows from under John’s eyes.

The ambulance is speeding away and the newly arrived cops are shoving an unconscious cousin roughly into the back of a car (they have added handcuffs because they had time for that sort of thing since they weren’t trying to stop the bleeding of a halfway-severed aorta) when Sherlock arrives. It had taken him a minute because unlike the police he had been forced to obey traffic laws like stop lights and speed limits on the way there.

Stumbling out of the car without throwing money at the cabbie because he did that a few minutes ago so he wouldn’t have to do it as he stumbled out of the car, Sherlock beelined for John– ignoring Greg Lestrade on the way. “You’re not dead!” He exclaimed.

In response he received a chortle “And you say I like to state the obvious,” John grinned playfully.

His attempts to get a rude retort or even a laugh were ignored in favor of Sherlock adding “You’re not severely maimed either!”

Now thrown a little off balance, John tries one last chance to make this funny: “Were you hoping to put my thumbs in the fridge too?” But when Sherlock is still gripping his arms, knuckles white and fingertips bruising, he goes for a gentler approach. “Sherlock, I’m fine. But you’re going to bruise my arms if you keep that up.”

The taller man slowly releases the shorter from his clutches but keeps searching his face for signs of distress. “We’re going home,” he eventually commands with a petulant stride following him to the still-waiting cab. 

John waves a hasty goodbye to Lestrade and climbs into the car with Sherlock. They ride in silence back to Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson greets them with ignorant felicity as they climb the stairs, and then Sherlock sits in his chair with a sulk while John makes tea.

They hadn’t done anything that pleasant in at least two and a half weeks.

Despite not being a genius, John can put two [ _ Sherlock’s guilt over his supposed close call and his missing a very interesting case _ ] and two [ _ the appreciative tone of those involved with the case and Sherlock’s fervent texting that morning _ ] together and see the deductions he should be making. “So what did you tell them?”

On the other hand, Sherlock, despite being a genius, is still sort of just glad John is okay, so it takes him three seconds to answer “Who?”

“Lestrade and Molly,” John enunciated, and with growing aggravation, he added “I know you sent me out today to try and make me feel better, and while the sentiment is appreciated I am not some damsel in ne-- “

“I didn’t tell them anything.” Sherlock cut in, sounding off-kilter.

“What?”

“I didn’t tell Lestrade or Molly anything. I did send you out to alleviate your growing depression though.” There is a long pause. “You were doubting yourself: I can’t have that and I know you wouldn’t accept an outright compliment– not in the state you were in and not from me. So I sent you out on a random case Lestrade sent me, in an effort to show you that you were capable of doing it. I texted both Lestrade and Molly this morning to let them know I wouldn’t be coming in today. The rest, that was natural. You just solved a case without me. I knew this would work without my intervention because I know you, and I know you’re enough and that you can.”

John opens his mouth to say something, but Sherlock begins talking over him– this time dropping the deductive composure and rambling into something more nervous and exposed.

“I know that… depression… isn’t so easy to fix. I know that… I just wanted to… show you. Show you that… you’re enough. You don’t need to be better because you’re already the, um, the best… the best, and the wisest, man… that I have ever known.”

Standing from his chair, John immediately bends over and wraps his arms around Sherlock “Get over here you–”  and he wants to finish with arsehole or prick but he finds he both physically and mentally cannot bring himself to say it. Sherlock’s being so sweet and vulnerable and John’s throat is closed with tears. This uncomfortable embrace lasts a long time before John whispers– because a whisper is all he can muster at this point– “You’re enough too, you know.” Several long seconds later the kettle screams for attention and John wipes his tears with his sleeve and goes to make tea.

Sherlock feels something warm inside his chest, and it certainly isn’t the tea because John hasn’t even made it yet.


	8. Heirloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auOivVnhI00

An Important Meta Theory:

 

Preface: anything I could have wanted to say here is said best by other songs, so I will instead get something closely related off my chest and that is

**John and Sherlock both had awful parents.**

Evidence:

Firstly I will dispel a circling rumor that John’s parents are deceased– they are both alive and well. We can derive this from the fact that in the show’s third season, episode 2, “The Sign of Three,” Sherlock says to Mary “You’re side of the [family] tree is looking a little thin,” to which Mary replies this is an “orphan’s lot.” Her side of the tree is looking thin because she has no parents. Sherlock would not have said this if John’s parents were dead because Mary’s side of the tree would look comparably the same size, there would be no reason to call attention to it. Therefore, John’s parents are alive, just not yet seen.

Secondly, we will tackle the issue of John’s parents. It would be easy to say that his sister is an alcoholic and John has terrible coping mechanisms, therefore he must have had bad parents, but let’s go even further. Yes, his sister is an alcoholic, and that is certainly a red flag, and yes we have another red flag in John’s inability to ask for help (the whole plotline of “The Lying Detective”), typically depressed moods (seeing a therapist, wasn’t eating before the show’s plot came along, and was likely suicidal if the parallels made in “The Lying Detective” are any show), and occasionally self-destructive actions (you could cite every time he needlessly throws himself into danger, but that would be a long list), but we have indirect actions of the parents themselves that can speak for them. Let’s go chronologically, shall we?

In season 1, episode 1, John is deduced as having no relatives he is willing to go to for help. This is translated by Sherlock to a strained relationship with the sister, but no such thing is said of the parents (important to note he did not deduce a dead parent here either). However, if John is unwilling to go to his alcoholic sister he is probably also unwilling to go to his parents, meaning the relationship with the parents must be equally or more strained. John’s parents are obviously not a major source of support in his life.

For episode 2 of season 1, there isn’t as many hints, but they are having financial issues that he still refuses to ask for help on. This is both a clue-in to his inability to ask for help and the fact that he doesn’t feel he can rely on his parents.

In episode 1 of season 2, John is deduced to have not called his sister, meaning he does regularly call his sister. Again, no similar thread is tied back to the parents, meaning he doesn’t make the effort to call them and they don’t call him either.

After the Reichenbach fall, John still stays out of touch with his sister and there is still no mention of parents. As sad as it is, this means that other than Mrs. Hudson, Mary, and occasionally Greg or Ella, he had no support system. Additionally, he is seen drinking a lot in the extra clip “Many Happy Returns” which can lead us to believe that drinking is not exclusive to his sister as a coping practice, and may have been learned from a negative parental role model.

In season 3, episode 2, John’s parents _do not show up to his wedding_. That was what really got me started thinking. These people didn’t even make an excuse like Harry, they just didn’t show. John’s reclusive and death-threatened ex-military superior showed up! Where were the Watsons?

The parents are also not shown at any point in the show afterwards, nor are they mentioned, despite Sherlock’s parents playing a heavy role in season 3 episode 3 and several moments in season 4. They didn’t comfort him when his wife died, they didn’t come to see their granddaughter once, they just weren’t there. Even on the blogs, the parents are never mentioned, or use usernames that allow for anonymity.

I can kind of see where the whole orphan theory came from.

Regardless, John’s parents have been proven to be two things: not dead and not around.

What kind of parent is alive but never pays attention to their kid at any point? A neglectful one, or an abusive one that has been cut out. Therefore it can be very reasonably deduced that John Watson’s parents are neglectful, or they are straight-up abusive and he has since cut all ties with them.

The second and harder beast to tackle would be the Holmes parents. They were so sweet and loveable when we met them, how could they have been shitty parents? Well, honey, let me _tell_ you. But first, I’m going to describe a type of mental disorder you may not have heard of.

Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) is a mental illness stemming from, essentially, a lack of love as a child. As infants and young children, sufferers of RAD are not held or meaningfully interacted with past feeding and other basic faculty care. As older children and adults, these people exhibit a range of symptoms from awkward social interaction to extreme selfishness to a lack of empathy to clinging tendencies to actions and compulsions that seem downright psychopathic or dangerous (sound familiar?). Treatment for RAD includes lots of therapy and showing the afflicted person that they can rely on and trust others– essentially trying to recreate a filial bond from the ground up. Effectiveness can vary with the depth of the affliction and the persistence put into treatment.

If you need some more dots connected, let’s look at each Holmes sibling specifically.

Mycroft, while very successful, is effectively emotionless in many cases and can be seen to be very awkward in dealing with any emotion he does encounter (he has random outbursts of brotherly compassion for Sherlock, he is downright malicious towards Eurus, going so far as to lock her up in a prison as opposed to getting her help, he doesn’t understand Lady Smallwood’s date offer, etc). He has been shown to put his brother’s safety over the safety of others in a way that is borderline irrational and always talks to his friends in creepy abandoned warehouses.

Sherlock, obviously, was also in bad places before the plot of the show. He’d been into drugs– one red flag akin to Harry’s drinking– and showed signs of depression (if you don’t believe me, look up the metas), also he was very clearly adverse to making friends before John. It can be seen that he grows to be more of a ‘human’ as the show goes on, which is probably due to both John and Mrs. Hudson (plus some help from other characters) pitching in to help him build a stable support network that he felt he could rely on.

Eurus is by far the least adjusted of the three Holmes siblings– her extensive list of psychopathic and sociopathic actions is literally unprecedented except by maybe Moriarty (and that is a _maybe_ ). She kills people without a second thought and shows– for the most part– no real and true emotions. When she was a toddler she tried to burn down the house… _intentionally_ (which could be a sign she was lashing out at her parents). It is only after Sherlock allows her to open up to him that she finally starts to get more grounded and stable, a recovery which would not be scientifically feasible if she had antisocial personality disorder or some extreme form of autism.

So we have seen that all three Holmes siblings have issues, but if you’re thinking it could be antisocial personality disorder or autism, think again. (Watch me get a little science-y here) With parents as normal and apparently calm as theirs, it is unlikely that they both have a severe mental illness that they passed on to their kids, and without a phenotypic expression that would detail a homozygous recessive genotype in both parents, there isn’t a very good chance that even one kid will get a disorder. Giving a recessive disorder to three kids separately without a homozygous recessive genotype? Right next to impossible. If it isn’t really screwed up genetics then it must be– you guessed it!–  a different environmental factor. That leaves either trauma or RAD, and since no Holmes sibling reports any trauma prior to Eurus killing Victor Trevor (which indicates that the mental illness is already in full swing), that leaves only RAD.

So there, the Holmes kids all have reactive attachment disorder, but does that really mean the Holmes parents are awful? They had such a nice relationship when we saw them… Did they though? Of all the relationships we saw, the parents incited sibling tension and were drugged by Sherlock (in “His Last Vow”), then called Mycroft, who runs a government effectively,  immature and incapable (in “The Final Problem”). They had pleasant demeanors, but so did my grandma, and she was as neglectful as they come to my mother. Parents mature with age like the rest of us, just because they are felicitous and jolly now doesn’t mean they always were. Either way we can accurately and decidedly call the Holmes parents neglectful as well.

 

Conclusion: The Watson and Holmes parents were awful, and Sherlock and John were pretty much best-case scenarios of growing up with abuse, as can be compared to their less well-adjusted siblings, and we should all pray for baby Rosie who will grow up under their care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *note, Sherlock's half of this meta was basically disproved in the comments section


	9. In the Embers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXt4MGCgGrU

Every once in awhile, people will think about what their life would be like without someone they love in it.

Molly Hooper is nearly broken to tears at the thought of her cat leaving her one day, but she still knows that day will come long before she dies. At these times she usually gives her beloved pet some extra food, out of a sentimental urge.

Greg Lestrade would be lost without his wife– unfaithful though she may be– not because there is a whole lot of love there, but because he’s never been with anyone else for such a long time. How does one go about learning the quirks and nuances of a human being? No, there is no love, but he can never imagine his life without her. When he thinks these things, he usually goes out for a beer.

Mycroft Holmes knows the loss of any of his family would probably be enough to crack him. He knows that there a bumps in the night far scarier than imagination or ghosts. There are people and technology that can make death quick or a roller coaster and he incessantly worries about both. Over a course of many years and a progressively more successful career, he has found random surveillance checks to be effective at staving off his fears. 

Mrs. Hudson, bless her saintly soul, cannot see herself without the lovely little mess makers of 221B. More than tenants, they are the sons she never had the privilege of raising, though she does allow herself to think she has made an impact on their lives in a role akin to a mother. Her otherwise dull life is made bright and lively, her golden years truly golden. What keeps her up at night is whether old age will take her or whether a dangerous lifestyle will take one of her boys, and she can’t bear either. She sleeps these horrors off.

John Watson knows exactly how impermanent life is, and knows this is especially true for his best friend. Between drugs beckoning and criminals threatening, he keeps a medical kit and a gun on hand pretty much constantly. Losing Sherlock scares him a little more than dying himself, largely because he’s had experience in both areas and has the dreadful luxury of accurately weighing between them. He just hopes that if someone has a gun aimed at both of their heads and a choice need be made, they’ll go for his head or his heart and make it quick. Sherlock usually sweeps these thoughts away for him with some strange activity or case.

Sherlock Holmes has planned the murders of his friends, as a mental exercise. Therefore he has it worked out, down to a science, their weaknesses in physical defense. If he’s honest with himself, which he rarely is in the field of emotions, he couldn’t stand to lose a single person in his life. On almost any day, however, he can admit (to himself if not aloud) that the loss of his best friend John would probably send him spiraling. He learned this from a thousand and one experiences where danger was imminent, at least a hundred where death was close, and a handful where he’d thought John was dead or dying. There was a correlation, he’d found, between John’s proximity to death and his own. Even accounting for confounding variables such as the both of them being in the same dangerous predicament, if John was in danger, Sherlock felt himself rapidly thrown into a panic that all but dashed his deductive skill and reasoning. The conclusion he came to is that John must not die– nobody he loved should die, but John especially so. Every once in awhile these thoughts dawned on him, so he would always wander to wherever John was to make sure he was doing ok, unless these thoughts were the crescendo of panic that accompanied a situation where John was not ok, in which case his method of soothing was to beat the living hell out of whoever did it and call an ambulance for his friend.


	10. Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOQrfLFDUKY

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Always together, at some point, for some duration of time lasting until the end of their days– whether that starts at age 2 and a half in a daycare center or at age seventy-eight in a convalescent home. Their souls are what can be called ‘twinmates’, a bond closer than a soul mate entailing not just a romantic bond in a majority of lifetimes, but a love bond in every single lifetime they are born into. Whether this love is– the platonic love in one life or filial love in another or romantic love in a third– they always find each other and they are always happiest together. 

There was a point when one of them was a dragon, and the other a hobbit. They were together for such a short time though, and as enemies. This was their least favorite lifetime.

Once, they were a pirate and his first mate, and they loved the open seas and the danger so much that those motifs filtered into the cracks of the personalities they took on afterward. 

After that there was an instance where they were a detective and a soldier, and they really loved these roles as well, so much they reiterated them several times in many different permutations. It was in this life where they came to know each other’s souls intimately, to the point where they had molded each other and themselves to fit perfectly as puzzle pieces that no other could match.

In some underwater city they became a scientist and an experiment, and this felt exciting to their developed adrenaline-seeking tendencies, so they incorporated these into the furnishings of their souls as well.

In this lifetime they adopted the monikers of druggie and doctor, a role-reversal of their previous iterations that both of them find entertaining. It allows for an adventurous thrill and a safe home to come back to. For both of them there has been tribulation, but there has been felicity as well. They like this lifetime best because it allows them to be what they are: John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Always together until the end of their days after they met in a mortuary underneath a hospital. 


	11. Mercury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJsF7sHpaPs

Rows of houses, sound asleep. Only streetlights notice me. Baker Street is quiet at midnight and I picked my timing for that reason. There’s the occasional car roaming by, but no people I’d have to interact with, and that is the goal.

God, I wish I had someone to talk to.

I’m lonely, pretty much all the time. I’m not sure if it has really sunk in that he’s dead because I don’t feel that sad, just empty. There’s no sadness in me, just an ache that starts in my chest and spreads to my leg and my stomach and makes me not want to do anything. I just feel like a pumpkin at Halloween, someone took a knife and shoved it into my guts and cut holes in me and then scraped out my insides until nothing was left but my carcass, and that’s all that’s left. Maybe I’m drunk, certainly not sober enough to walk upright and in a straight line. Really I’m desperate, if nothing else. Stuck in a holding pattern. Trying to find myself– because who the hell was I before the basement at Bart’s?

I talk in circles, out loud because there’s some crazy part of my brain still in hard-core denial that make me feel like maybe he’s around. Constantly, I watch for signals, for a clue. As if, maybe, if I look hard enough, he’ll suddenly be back. It’s been two and half years, and I know I must be losing my mind. The rationale probably left with the sobriety, but these are beliefs that creep even into my non-inebriated thoughts. It’s not just the whiskey talking. I'm not as drunk as I wish I was. 

“How do I feel different? How do I feel new?” I ask no one. Maybe I’m asking myself, but it feels like something you should ask someone else. There is, of course, the understanding that neither feeling different or feeling new is an option. That would take some science fiction bending the truth. No one can unring this bell, unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart, those are all foregone conclusions, entirely past the point of saving and overall not worth saving in the first place.

God knows I’m dissonance waiting to be pulled into tune. Or maybe I should just be myself, my stupid, drunk, out-of-tune self.

“I’ll go anywhere you want me to.” This is a whisper, a plea sent to someone– anyone, honestly, just someone stop me from getting home. In the end, I know the farther I go, the closer I get to home, the harder I try to ignore what I will come home to, it only keeps my eyes closed. All of it will still happen and no delusional train of thought will stop it.

The one really fucked up thing is that  _ somehow _ I’ve fallen in love at this middle ground. More correctly, I realized what I’d felt as love. And to think: it only cost me my soul. The soul that left my body and took a nose dive off the roof of a hospital. Sometimes, lately, I start feeling like it came back for a second, before it leaves again. I know that’s probably just another thing the alcohol does to me, but the feeling is there sometimes. 

Again aloud, I sputter “And I  _ know _ that if I stepped aside and released the damned controls you would open my eyes. Then maybe I wouldn’t be such a dumbass.” This reminds me that I’m on my way home, of how stupid I am for going home tonight. Quietly, with a shuffling kick of a loose piece of pavement that almost trips me, I mutter “And somehow all of this mess is just my stupid attempt to know the worth of my own life.”

Finally, the front door. I don’t want to open it, but I do anyways. I have to. One can’t simply stand at an unopened door for any prolonged amount of time. Secretly I wished that was something that I did, because I wanted just a few more minutes. Still, I trudge up the stairs to the sitting room and pick up my gun from his chair. 

I’ve planned this so well, the comfort of it, but still find it a pity that my chair will be ruined after this whole thing, and that Mrs. Hudson will have to re-rent the flat. 

Anderson and Donovan will probably be first on the scene though, since Greg is off tonight, and that is a little satisfying. 

I feel rushed because it’s one in the morning, and I’d wanted it all to be over by now, so I try to hurry and angle the barrel into my mouth at a fatal angle. I’d hate to miss.

Then the door downstairs opens quietly, and I can’t help but think  _ “goddammit” _ as I hear footsteps ascending the stairs. Who in God’s name is out of the house at 1:03 am? Other than me.

Because I don’t want to scare anyone entering the sitting room, I remove the gun from my mouth. Because I don’t really care that much about whoever barged into my home at 1:03 in the morning, I don’t hide the gun from their vision.

I sort of wish I had hidden the gun from myself when one Sherlock Holmes attempts to tiptoe into the room wearing pajamas and a robe and I get the urge to shoot him.

“John. You’re up… early.” He tries to say it casually, as if I really was just up early and he was just coming home from something like a pajama party.

I think I open my mouth three times in entirely separate attempts to say entirely separate things, but nothing really comes out except ridiculous facial expressions.

It takes him an inordinately long time to notice my gun in my hand halfway pointing in his direction and I try to attribute this to the fairly dark conditions of the flat. “You have your gun.”

This time I find I nod, instinctively pointing it away from people now that it has been brought up.

“John…”

“Okay first of all, where the  _ fuck _ were you?” It was sort of like a knee-jerk reaction. As if I didn’t control it at all. It just popped out of me in one fluid phrase.

“That’s a complicated answer.”

“Okay, why didn’t you tell me where you were?” This question is more manual, but still impulsive.

“Secrecy was paramount to–”

“You’ve been gone for two and a half years!” I whisper tersely, because I can’t bring myself above a whisper anymore. “Jesus christ, you faked your own death and then just leave us all to grieve? You thought that was a good idea? What the hell? How could you–?” The words take more and more effort as I say them, like I’m nearing a limit, and I feel a blockage coming to my throat. 

“John, I’m–” I feel like I might scream at him if he continues, so I hold up my finger to stop him, except this is the hand holding the gun so it sort of looks like I’m pointing it at him. I’m not, and I don’t think he’s offended, he better not be offended.

“Why are you in your pajamas?”

“What? Because I only have one suit and I don’t want to get it dirty.” Before I can even vocalise the absurdity of what he’s said within context he adds “I didn’t think you’d be up nearly this early. Especially not today. I didn’t want to ruin the one suit before seeing you again for the first time. First impressions are very important, John, and especially so if one is coming back from the dead.” There he went, mouthing off with the exact tone of voice he’d use if he were telling me about some double homicide. To his credit, I can tell he’s trying not to sound patronizing. It’s not working very well, but then again I’m a suicidal ex-military doctor who’s just beginning to sober up; everything sounds patronizing to me.

There’s a very long and awkward pause where I feel inclined to say nothing and be both violently angry and ludicrously pleased at the same time, and where Sherlock feels the need to say something placating because we both know what he walked in on me doing. 

He shifts towards me, trying to start with “John,”

But I tell him “Shut up.”

He’s nearly two feet away from me now, having scooted from the entryway in infinitesimal increments, and when I meet his eyes directly for the first time they look overflowing with things he needs to say. 

“I need a drink,” I mutter, rising from my chair and shuffling towards the kitchen without letting go of the gun. I tell Sherlock “You get three things, using no more than three minutes. Then I’m going to bed.” 

“First and foremost, John I’m sorry for what I did. I didn’t think it would… have this effect.” He tells me as I grab the alcohol and a glass from the cupboard. I am less certain than I was yesterday that these haven’t held body parts recently because now I’m more sure that my flatmate is alive. “And I know I’m in no position to make demands, but I will wrestle that gun out of your hands if I have to.” Blankly, I hand him the pistol and the relief that literally shows on his face sort of makes me want to cry. 

One minute and forty-seven seconds has passed.

“Secondly,” I take a shot of whatever strong-smelling liquid amber my glass holds and then nearly spit it out when  he says “I love you.” What allows me to keep in and swallow my drink is that I will certainly need the buzz to handle this shit. “I wasn’t able to say it on the phone, but I’ve loved you essentially since a few weeks after we’d met.” 

Two minutes and fifty seconds gone, not that I’m really keeping track right now.

“And finally,” a sheepish smile graces Sherlock’s face and I’m not sure if that is to spite me or not “Happy birthday.”

It takes me around fourteen more seconds to respond and even then all that happens is a few drops of water sneak out of my eyes to fall down half of my face before I wipe them away.

I cut him off before he opens his mouth, “I still need to sleep.”

“Oh.”

“Not that I’m actually going to get any.”

“...Oh…”

He doesn’t really understand what I’m doing– and let’s be honest, neither do I– until I have actually, physically wrapped my arms around his torso and buried my face into his shoulder. 

“You,” I tell him, “are an absolute arsehole.” When it strikes me that I still haven’t actually told him as much, I add “But I love you too.”


	12. Venus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwMN8QtWCic

Soulmates are sort of hard to find.

On the more difficult side, until you meet your soulmate, every injury you sustain is permanent. Did that girl in fifth grade punch you in the face? Well, that’s staying with you until you find your special someone. Did you get a papercut on your hand? Too bad, that will be a very visible scar unless your true love has been identified. It even goes as far as to mental injury: insults, self-depreciating attitudes, embarrassment, and anything else that would cause temporary mental discomfort leads to a mental fracture that escalates as the injury intensifies.

On the easier side, both of you have a slight magnetic pull that intensifies as you get closer and wanes as you move away– like a really high-stakes game of ‘you’re getting warmer’.

Due to this “soulmate problem” as it’s called, scientists, educators, and specialists have concerted their efforts to make the world as safe as possible for those who are “magnetized,” meaning they have yet to find their soul mate. Paper has softer, less sharp edges, all furniture must have either rounded or foam corners, and self-esteem and well-being classes are mandatory in every school.

Essentially, the world has been baby-proofed. 

This doesn’t mean that everyone is safe, however. Some, like John Watson, never had the advantage of caring parents, and so his body is covered in the burns and cuts of childhood along with the scrapes and bullet holes of war. He thinks himself “polarized,” his soulmate presumed dead for lack of a magnetic attraction, and that’s why the army took him at all. They never take those who are magnetized, only those polarized or “fielded” (meaning they have found their soulmate, and are therefore able to heal). Those polarized are often pitied by society because their lifespan shortens significantly without being able to heal. Where a normal fielded person lives to an average of eighty, the normal polarized person lives to forty. The army only expels the polarized when they have a wound that will either end their life– in which case they are sent home to live out their last few weeks with loved ones– or one that will permanently affect their ability to fight, since they can’t heal.

John was a little bit of both. Technically, he was sent home on a permanent polarized disability, but with so many scars accumulating so densely all over his body, there was a tacit understanding that he wouldn’t last long.

He returned, not to his home in Ainwick, but to the more southern, urban locale of London with every intention of cutting ties with his family and few friends before retiring himself on his own terms.

 

Sherlock Holmes was a little bit like an inverse– an opposite pole, if you’d like a pun– physically, his wealthy family had done the very best to ensure he was as unscathed as possible. There was so little scarring that a bystander might wonder if he was already fielded. The issue came when he opened his mouth. Because this precocious boy had been as advanced as he was, with a family predisposition for addiction and anxiety, he suffered more torment that most other kids, and there wasn’t a whole lot the self-esteem and well being teachers could do after a certain point. He developed moderate, soulmate-related schizophrenia and severe soulmate-related damage to his Broca’s area, making his speech largely unintelligible. There was still a brain, but no one could really understand him and even if they could his words would likely be disregarded as his frequent hallucinations made it difficult for him to separate mind from matter. 

Since he never felt a strong magnetism, he also assumed himself polarized, and therefore no drugs were assumed to be of help and no speech therapy seemed worthwhile. He lived with family friend Martha Hudson in central London, she had patience in her age and love in her soul that none of the Holmes’s could muster for their disappointingly polarized son.

 

It was under somewhat unnatural circumstances that John and Sherlock met, Sherlock was just sitting in his favorite chair– the soft one that he could fit his whole body into if he curled up, and had an imaginary dog friend named Gladstone always stoically by the front left leg– when he felt a tug in his chest. Not like the painful echo of heartbreak or the butterflies of anxiety or the grimace-inducing strain of loneliness that Sherlock knew very well, but a warm and very physical  _ grab _ that nearly pulled him out of his chair. There was a certainty that this wasn’t a hallucination because Sherlock’s hallucinations were never touching him, only heard and seen.

It took several minutes for him to get over his denial and get out of his chair. 

Like I said, he was precocious even when young, and schizophrenia and a damaged Broca’s area did nothing to impair his overall mental acuity, so he was quickly putting together what this was and what it meant. 

He put on his favorite coat– the thick wool one that changed colors and whispered strange nonsensical phrases that Sherlock found very relatable– and dashed past Mrs. Hudson downstairs. “Beep beep beep zero mile out pain,” he called informatively on his way out the door. Though he understood he wasn’t supposed to go outside on his own (due to some drivel about how the voices telling him to hurt people meant he was dangerous), he figured this trumped anything else on any scale of importance.

It wasn’t until he got to the point where the tug in his chest was nearly dragging him along that he remembered he was only wearing pajamas under his coat. If he could have, he would have turned back to get dressed in nicer clothes, but like I said, magnetism was dragging him.

 

Meanwhile John had just stepped off a plane and was already feeling a tug in his chest as well. This wasn’t the pain of having your ribs stepped on or the burn of alcohol or the grimace-inducing strain of loneliness that John knew very well, but a warm and very physical  _ grab _ that nearly pulled him off his feet, which wasn’t hard now that he was limping around with a cane. 

He tried to ignore the pull, but in a society where you are magnetically attracted to someone and it is actually socially acceptable to drop everything and go find them, he was beginning to let some hope shine into the cracks of his scars. 

It took him around thirteen minutes to cease the denial and get up (thinking “fuck my bags, I’ll get them later”) and limp as fast as his cane could carry him out of the airport. He got a cab and gave the driver a direction that changed as the magnetic pull in his chest did. They drove for about half an hour, passing all sorts of crazy city sights John hadn’t seen before like a dozen hot dog stands and a violin player on a corner and a crazy man running around in pajamas and a wool coat.

 

They passed each other three more times, each time way more frustrating than the last. Eventually the cabbie got annoyed with John and left him on a street corner, he continued to limp wherever his magnetism pulled him.

They didn’t recognize each other at first either, they stood at opposite sides of a street, staring at each other amidst the crowds insulating them and only when the souls reaching from their chest screamed that they meet did Sherlock (being a gentleman and noticing how beat up John looked) cross the street. 

They didn’t touch yet because they were scared and mesmerized; John by how much this man looked perfect in every way, how he was so unmarred by the harshness of life; Sherlock by how beautiful John’s scars looked, like constellations all over his skin. 

They knew that every scar Sherlock touched would leave John’s skin, and how every word John spoke would heal the fragmentation of Sherlock’s brain. There would never be the permanent hurt of a magnetized soul ever again.

“Scar magnet magnet magnet you fields star.” Sherlock initiated, grinning a little nervously.

With a face that quickly morphs from perplexed to comprehending, John greets “H-hello.” 

“Star… scars…” 

Not sure what to say, there is “I’m, um, I’m John,” because he has to say something because he can see his soulmate– whoever he is– pulling words like teeth out of his skull.

“W-who?” Sherlock struggles to enunciate.

“John…? Oh! John Watson. Um, nice to meet you…” John isn’t used to talking a whole lot, but he’s trying to say as much as he can as nicely as he can so this man can speak.

“Sherlock.” He says, and there comes this euphoric, ebullient expression as he says it.

John tests the waters, “Do we get a last name?”  

“Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.” 

“So… so that was your soulmate problem? The talking?” John tries to solidify his soulmate’s hold over his own psyche, but barely gets to finish speaking.

“And the schizophrenia. Oh, don’t look like that. It’s been decreasing in visible increments since you began talking. I can’t even see the stars on you anymore.  _ God _ , it’s been so long since I was able to form a coherent sentence, this is lovely. Thank you.” Before John can do more than smile, Sherlock continues rapidly. “I need to return the favor, I don’t like unreturned favors. I’ll have to give Mrs. Hudson something big. She’s the landlady, will you move in? She’s simply the most pleasant woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, she took care of me for a while when I was unable to do so myself. You don’t have anywhere to live, do you? Oh, nevermind, look at you, you just got home from Afghanistan– or Iraq?– either way you’re coming to live with me. Is that okay? It better be okay, I don’t think I’ll ever get over being able to talk again–- wait your scars! Give me one, I’ll heal it. How does this work? No not a big one, a little one, a papercut or something. We’re supposed to talk about the big ones. Yes, that one! Let’s see.”

After the torrent of speech, even the busy street was silenced when Sherlock grabbed John’s hand with the utmost care and used one thumb to rub at a papercut that hadn’t healed since grade school. It disintegrated. The whole scar just left his body, the only thing remaining behind Sherlock’s gentle thumb being smooth new skin.

The pain left with it.

“Oh, come on let’s go home.” Sherlock gushed excitedly. I want to hear about all of your scars, even the little stupid ones. I want to know everything about you.”

John, finally snapping out of his mesmerized stare, responded coolly with “You’ll have to tell me about all of yours too then. Even the ones that don’t show up on the skin.” More than a little nervously, he grabbed Sherlock’s hand and said “I want to know all of you, love.”

This sent Sherlock into a bubbling felicity, he giggled as he told John “I like that nickname, but don’t tell my brother, he can be awful. By the way, I play violin at all hours and sometimes don’t talk for days on end– or well I used to– but would that bother you? Soulmates should know the worst about each other…”


	13. Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGWtF1AttTw

Goddammit, why did all of this start over the milk? Why did most of John Watson’s problems directly relate to Sherlock– and why were half of those milk-related and the other half criminal-related? I guess John’s current predicament is both, but so far he only blames the milk and himself. 

 

Sixteen hours ago he’d arrived home from the store, newly purchased milk in one hand and rambunctious, nearly-toddling daughter in the other. Mrs. Hudson immediately assaulted him, saying Mrs. Turner was over for bridge, and she just  _ had _ to meet Rosie. John grinned, agreed, handed Rosie off, said hello to Mrs. Turner, and went upstairs (without Rosie, which was admittedly a little easier) to put the milk away. 

He’d just set the milk down on the fridge shelf when a sizzling noise came to him and he realised the bottom of the milk carton was burning. In the fridge. Without fire. “Sherlock!?” He called. 

Ruffled curls and goggles emerged in a silk robe from Sherlock’s room, not because John called him but because he just remembered he left something in the fridge. 

“Sherlock why is the fridge burning the milk?”

“Experiment… might want to take the milk out.”

“It’s melted into the shelf.”

“Knew this could happen–”

“‘Course you did.” John sighs exasperatedly.

Sherlock shrugs it off. “You should have smelled it.” He walks right past John to get a mug from the cupboard above his shorter friend’s head.

Ducking out of the way, John seethes. “The whole kitchen smells like a  _ corpse _ , Sherlock, it always does!” He shouts, taking half a step closer and sort of intending to keep going, until he saw Sherlock’s face.

It was terrified. “...oh…” Is all that he says. The lack of sass is almost more concerning than the way he flinches. John nearly lifts a hand, to reach out in some form of comfort, then he remembers who he is and takes about three steps back. 

He doesn’t get to fill that role. Not for Sherlock, not for anybody. He lost the privilege a long time ago, when he watched his wife die and beat his best friend into the ground.

Instead he coughs out “I need some air” and heads down the stairs, pausing only to let Mrs. Hudson know he was going out for a walk.

 

Fourteen hours ago, John had been ready to come home, but when was the last time that thought ever got finished? Instead, he was picked up off the side of the road with a bag over his head and a needle in his arm.

 

Three hours ago he woke up, dazed and paralyzed, with the damned bag  _ still _ over his head. He wasn’t even being moved anywhere, they just kept the bag. Definitely not atypical of kidnappings, but definitely more careful than most. 

A phone was shoved against one ear and a gun against the other. 

“John? Hello?” Goddammit, Sherlock. John sort of wished he had texted, so that he would recognize that John didn’t respond and be a little concerned, figure out something was up, but here they were on the phone. 

He said the exact words on his mind: “Vatican Cameo–” They slammed the gun against his head again.

 

Two hours ago John was awake again, someone said something about buying time. John wanted to laugh at them. So far they were  _ losing _ time by keeping him company, and even with a stupid bag over his head;  someone punched him in the face.

He thought that was a little ridiculous, because how could they see his face and know where to hit if the bag was still over it? They could totally miss and do something unintentional, like miss, or break his nose and have it bleed all over their stupid bag. Then they went for the stomach and then the knees. If their aim was to immobilize John for whenever the drugs wore off, they did a good job.

 

Now John is waking up again in a place that smells like shit– literally like fecal matter– and now his hands and feet are tied up  _ along with _ the bag that is still over his fucking head. John thinks this is overkill. If they wanted to leave him to die, drugging him  _ and  _ tieing him up  _ and _ beating the crap out of him is just way more effort than they need. God knows why they even took him, if their goal was to leave him again. John isn’t even really feeling that much pain, he’s just confused and annoyed and he wants to go home because goddammit it is  _ cold _ .

They– whoever  _ they _ happened to be– tied him well, but there a sharp piece of something that John scrapes his knuckles on, then uses to break out his hands. Then the feet are easy and then the bag comes off and _ oh my god it’s nighttime what dicks _ . 

He stands, sort of. It’s a kneel, okay? He’s compromising with his entirely inebriated and pained body. There is trash everywhere, so he’s in a dumpster, and when he exits he can tell by the spacing and style of the buildings he’s just outside London’s city limits. 

He gets a hold of himself enough to check for a phone that obviously isn’t with him before groaning in annoyance and pain and climbing out of the dumpster. He falls flat on his back. There’s a fancy restaurant next to him and a convenience store across the street. He tries the restaurant and they kick him out (“Go beg for change somewhere else.”), so the convenience store it is. Twice, he nearly falls down while crossing the crosswalk, and some teenager on a skateboard helps him get all the way across as cars begin to honk. 

The hispanic girl behind the counter of the store has a dyed-purple streak in her hair, and the roots are growing out badly, and that distracts John for a whole thirty-nine seconds before he asks “Can I use your… y-your… Phone?” Drugs make it hard to talk as well as walk, it would seem.

She shrugs, hands over her cell phone as opposed to showing him an office landline, and he nods gratefully, the action probably slurring just as badly as his words, before sitting down on the floor and dialing a familiar number.

Sherlock doesn’t fucking pick up, which is rude, and John says as much into the  dial tone before leaving the message saying “Uuuuhh… I’m at a… a st-store… there’s-s… a girl here? I’m on her phone…” then he runs out of time. As far as he knows, this will get a very clear message across, and Sherlock will probably come get him soon. He smiles stupidly and gives the girl back her phone. He keeps sitting there for about another hour and a half, to him it feels like minutes. No one comes into the store really, so he just keeps sitting on the floor.

Suddenly, the girl’s phone rings and she picks it up lazily. “Oh, um yeah,” she mutters into the receiver, “he’s right here.” She hands the phone to John and John takes it.

“John?”

“Oh, uummm… yes?”

“What’s wrong with your–? Why are you talking like–? Nevermind, where are you?”

“I am… hmmm… in a store. Nex-next to a fancy… restaurant…. And-nd a dump… ster.”

“What–? You know what, hand the phone back to the nice girl.”

“Okay-y.” John looks up at the girl and she is sort of smiling sadly at him. “I-it’s for… you…”

She takes the phone and gives the address and a quick overview of what exactly she knows about this situation, which isn’t much but it keeps Sherlock sane until he gets there.

The tall man seems taller from John’s sitting perspective when he walks in through the automatic doors. “John, why are you on the floor?”

“Mmmm… do-don’t know…”

“He’s been sitting there for about two hours now. Since he first called ya.” The girl at the counter informs with a shrug. “Didn’t want to move him in case he went outside and got himself caught in traffic.”

“Thank you.” Sherlock gives her a tight grin for propriety's sake– he’s actually ridiculously grateful but he’s too worried and inexperienced with social interaction to show it well.

“Don’t mention it, mate. Get him home safe.”

“Sher-sherlock? You look… so tall…”

“Let’s go home.”

“Sorry-ry I yelled… at… you.”

“That’s fine. Let’s just go home.”

“Okay.”

They’ll deal with the rest the next day, after John has slept off the worst of the side effects and after Rosie stops screaming for her Dad and after John realizes that he is asleep in Sherlock’s bed as opposed to his own.


	14. Mars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtU_7SHYEnI

When John had first joined the military, he hadn’t really looked at it as a dangerous decision, nor one he would regret. Staying with his family any longer? That was dangerous, and he’d certainly regret it.

He signed up, left his name on a dotted line, left his date of birth and history behind. Never had a second thought.

He hadn’t had it easy when he was young, and he didn’t expect to have it easy anywhere else, but he wasn’t sure of a whole lot of ways it could be worse. He’d be a medic, it wasn’t like he’d often be in imminent danger.

Key word: often.

Because there was a time when him and the rest had their backs against a wall, surrounded and afraid, with all of their lives in the hands of the soldiers taking aim.

And as John Watson patched up broken soldier after broken soldier, each one dead or near-dying or handicapped, and all of them screaming in pain, he wondered: how did bodies born to heal become so prone to die?

He still wasn’t quite expecting it as much as he should have been when a sniper bullet slammed through his shoulder.

He still wasn’t quite expecting to be dragged off the battlefield by a man undeterred by his delirium.

He still wasn’t quite expecting the infection to set in and shake his body to the core with a virus he couldn’t hope to defend against, and he hadn’t expected it to be just as deadly as the enemy who shot him.

He still hadn’t quite expected to be the man near-dying and screaming in pain: a body born to heal, and now supposed to die.

Of course, he didn’t die, did he? He lived on, and went home and got a therapist and got rid of a limp and met a man and moved in with the man, and time was kind to him. Mostly. See he did find his way to a home, and he let his cuts and bruises heal, but there was a brand new war beginning, and no one else even saw this one– at first, not even John.

It’s easy to reason away a nightmare, or three or nine or sixteen, but when they start happening nightly and you wake up exactly as terrified as you were the moment you got shot with cold sweat and a cry stuck in your throat buried underneath tears, you stop reasoning and stop feeling. When you almost attack someone for moving too quickly and nearly melt down after your psycho best friend plays a prank that hits a little too close to home and you start walking real slow when you cross streets, that’s when you recognize a problem.

But friends that really love you are nothing if not exactly what you need, so maybe he doesn’t mention it when you start waking up mid-nightmare to the sound of a violin instead of the echoes of explosions and gunfire, and maybe you let him not mention it. When he literally drags your sorry ass out of a fire that would have killed you and nearly strangles a man that left you tailspinning into a flashback and even does little shit like making tea when you’ve forgotten to eat and tea is all you can manage or letting you know that opening up is okay, you start to really appreciate that the infection and the bullet let you live this long.

And when someone tries to drag that man away from you, you let them know that a scar isn’t the only thing you brought back from the war. There is the goodness in the heart of every broken man who’s come right up to the edge of losing everything he has, but there’s also a side of him that you’d like to ignore more than the PTSD, more than the fact that he experienced horror: he learned from it.

A note of warning: let them be. It will just end better for you.


	15. Jupiter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqrEox67O78

A paraphrased (a.k.a translated to modern speech, and entirely fictitious) note from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

 

When I began writing all this down– not this note, the whole damned “Sherlock Holmes” story– I had the impression it would remain rather clandestine. Not by design, mind you, I never would go so far as to hide a piece of writing, but there was a hope that it would remain untouched by the prying eyes and poking noses of the passers-by of each story-seller, unread by those who would not understand.

You see, there is an aspect of Holmes and Watson that remains hidden halfway underneath the ‘and’. It is a thing shameful to mention, consider, and alas, even to write in my day and age. The church calls it amoral, the drunks call it disgusting: I don’t care what they call it, it is what I am. Through writing the “Sherlock Holmes” stories, I have lost bits of myself, and even if I know not what I am, I can say with certainty a few things I am not. I will digress to allow that the initial direction of my stories was not what they ended being, but I, a curious speck caught in some Copernican orbit, was drawn in, and my stories changed with me. I will not afford one soul the smug smirk of feeling above me for what I write or what I am, therefore, I wished to remain clandestine. 

However, in this note I would like to remark not only my distaste for contemporary opinion, but also my wishes for those hopefully continuing my story with more felicitous conclusions in the future. Make my messes, those blunders that were unavoidable in the face of that public which would like nothing more than to disgrace me, matter. Make the chaos that I wished to create in my own time count in yours. Let every fracture in the dialogue and every juxtaposed interaction that creates a glistening crack in the facade of Watson and Holmes shatter the entire charade itself and reveal the true contention of my writing: Watson with Holmes. 


	16. Saturn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3lWwMHFhnA

He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be up on that roof, poised to jump, telling me goodbye over a phone call. That’s wrong, wrong,  _ wrong _ . I would rather take ten thousand falls myself than watch him do it once. It should be me on that rooftop.

And so it was.

Jim Moriarty’s corpse behind me, smell of blood bringing back haunting faces of those long gone, people passing below without a thought to the man on the roof, the man I love holding a phone to his ear and telling me to shut up, telling me he’s on the way up.

I shout at him, telling him to stay exactly where he is, and I say goodbye, and I fall.

I fall thousands and thousands of feet off of a waterfall and only during the fall do I realize that this has all been a trick. It was all a show, and Sherlock Holmes has finally been fooled. 

Then I land, my face slick with blood, my heart slowing to a stop with the grace of a freight train. People bustle around me, and I can hear the glib horror, the superficial disbelief in their gasps and mutters. Sherlock is making his way through the crowd, “Please, please, he’s my friend, let me through.” I’ve never heard Sherlock ask nicely in his life and if the situation weren’t so dire I’d laugh. He kneels next to me, checks the pulse in my wrist. He can probably see the scars if he pulls the sweater up enough. “John? John? Please, John, answer me.” People are pulling him off, pushing him away. He’ll see through it if he pokes at me long enough. “John? No, no, no, John! I love you? Please, no. Stop it, stop this, get off of me! John!” His voice shakes with his sobs. 

This hurts. I hurt. I shouldn’t hurt. It’s all a trick, it shouldn’t hurt. I can feel the screams boring into my chest, digging long claws into my lungs and ripping a hole in my heart and scraping at my scar tissue. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe? I’m not dead, I’m not dead. I’m not dead, so I should be able to breathe. 

“Sherlock?”

The voice is watery and far away. It’s familiar. 

“Sherlock, can you hear me?”

I get up off the pavement. John is staring, phone falling from his hand to the ground. The crowd dissipates. Nothing makes sense. I was John, am John. Am I John?

“Come on, Sherlock, let’s get you some water.”

No, no. I am not John. John is warm and soft and firm and adrenaline and tea and home. I am not John.

“Sherlock? You’re worrying me. Can you at least open your eyes?” 

I am Sherlock. I am cold and hard and weak and pain and violins and work. I am Sherlock.

“Love, I’m going to have to call the ambulance if you’re really this bad.”

My eyes snap open. I hate ambulances. Also, what did John just call me? 

“There you are.”

“I hate ambulances.”

“I know. That’s why I said it. Now drink some water and take this pill. Your fever’s getting too high.”

“I hate pills.”

“That’s the spirit.”

I take the damned pill. 

“Are you hungry?” I swipe a hand at his face, lazily. “That’ll be a no then. I’ll be in the other room if you need me. I’ll check back in an hour or so.”

“John.”

“What?”

“I love you too.”

“What.”

“You heard me.”

“Fever talking?”

“I am perfectly in control of my faculties, John.” I insist with a wobbly voice, and to prove it I sit up in bed. It doesn’t go well when I try to stand, however. John manages to wrestle me back under the covers.

“Quite.” I notice his face is absolutely red. Out-of-character and duly noted.

“I still love you.” 

He shuts the door behind him and I pout, feeling not only horrified by my own dreams and discouraged by his reaction, but also rather disoriented from reality. Maybe the fever is getting to me.

The door opens.

“I love you too.”

Closes.

Opens. “We’re having a discussion about this when you’re not nearing 39 degrees.” Closes.

I smile and try to find a better sleep than last time.


	17. Neptune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkCB4ATLCo0

Pitch black ( _ I bruised his eyes _ ), pale blue ( _ they’re beautiful _ ). 

It was a stained glass variation of the truth ( _ he hadn’t killed her _ ), and I felt empty handed ( _ I knew that _ ).

You let me set sail ( _ “you let me grieve” _ ) with cheap wood ( _ that’s twice now _ ), so I patched up every leak that I could ( _ I blamed myself for so long _ ) 'til the blame grew too heavy ( _ it hurt so bad _ ).

Stitch by stitch, I tear apart ( _ I beat him into the floor _ ). If brokenness is a form of art, I must be a poster child prodigy ( _ and it felt good to beat someone else, instead of being beaten _ ). Thread by thread, I come apart ( _ but I knew better _ ). If brokenness is a work of art, surely this must be my masterpiece ( _ because I broke a broken man, and that wasn’t right _ ).

I'm only honest when it rains ( _ no one can hear me _ ). If I time it right, the thunder breaks when I open my mouth ( _ I’m not sure if I want them to hear me _ ). I want to tell you but I don't know how ( _ I’m not sure if I want him to hear me _ ). I'm only honest when it rains ( _ I tried to say it once, twice, three times _ ). An open book with a torn out page, and my ink's run out ( _ but now I know I don’t deserve it _ ). I want to love you but I don't know how ( _ I don’t deserve him _ ).

 

I want to love you...

 

Pitch black ( **the funeral is dull** ), pale blue ( **he doesn’t let me see him cry** ). These wild oceans shake what's left of me loose just to hear me cry mercy ( **I let him hurt me because he needs to** ).

A strong wind at my back ( **he doesn’t get better** ), so I lift up the only sail that I have: this tired white flag ( **I give him his space** ).

I'm only honest when it rains ( **I tell myself that I don’t need him, just like I don’t need anyone else** ). If I time it right, the thunder breaks when I open my mouth ( **that’s a lie and I know it** ). I want to tell you but I don't know how ( **I know he won’t hear these words now though** ).

I'm only honest when it rains ( **I can wait for him** ). An open book with a torn out page ( **if it’s even a matter of time** ), and my ink's run out ( **I don’t know how long I can wait** ). I want to love you but I don't know how ( **this is all so wrong** ).

 

I want to love you…

 

I’m only honest when it rains. ( _ I’m sorry) _

An open book with a torn out page, and my ink’s run out. ( **I’m fine** ) I want to love you but I don’t know how ( **it’s fine** ).

I don’t know how ( _ it’s not fine _ ). I don’t know how ( _ it’s unforgivable _ ). I don’t know how ( _ I’m sorry _ ).

I want to love you but I don’t know how ( **please stop crying** ).

I don’t know how ( _ I’m sorry _ ).

I want to love you but I don’t know how ( **it’s okay** ).

I want to love you but I don’t know how ( _ can you forgive me? _ ).

I want to love you but I don’t know how ( **I wasn’t planning on holding a grudge** ). 

I want to love you ( _ I love you _ ).

I want to love you ( **I love you too** ).


	18. Pluto

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KKnwu8neYY

They don’t talk about the fall anymore. Not since he came back. Not since they started dating. Not since they got married. They just don’t talk about it, it’s not something they do. 

For one thing, it’s an uncomfortable topic. Yes, Sherlock was only gone a month and a half, and yes he sent John a text that same evening to reassure him, and yes he had explained the whole plan to John afterwards, but that didn’t make it less painful. John and Sherlock mutually describe the time from when John spotted Sherlock on the hospital rooftop to the time he got Sherlock’s encrypted text as the worst and lowest points in their entire lives. 

For another thing, they’re not sure what to talk about. The plan was explained. They’ve always made sure to keep their own and each other’s feelings in check. What else is there? 

Also, it scares them. They both get nightmares, though those are dying in frequency as time smooths their cracks, and sometimes those wicked fever dreams leak into their waking hours when a call is too close.

Like now.

Several hours ago, this had been a lovely morning chase. John and Sherlock, side by side, sprinting after their suspected drug boss (John had already commented on the irony of the ex-druggie chasing the drug-smuggler, and Sherlock had called him a trite prat, and they had both grinned winning grins, and Greg had told them to hurry their asses up). There had been the suggestion of a split-up from Sherlock, breathless and two-syllabled, and they had each gone a different route to search the dense back alleyways of London.

Sherlock was regretting, presently, the route he chose.

See, several hours ago, he had taken a turn and ran straight into a rag. Which was all well and fine by itself, but then a hand had clamped around the back of his head, and then he knew that his goose was well and thoroughly cooked just before the chloroform dragged him below consciousness. 

He had dreams of falling backwards, John turning inside out in the literal sense with unexpressed grief, gravity weighing both of their hearts down into the dirt.

When he tumbled into the dirt himself, he didn’t really expect it to hurt. He wasn’t quite outside the dream. Tumble and hurt he did, however, so afterwards consciousness was swift to tumble back into him, and that hurt a little worse than the fall. 

They stuck something in his neck. Drugs, no doubt, and the stupid bastards probably expected him to die of an overdose. Afterwards they made him dig until he collapsed– that was the drugs beginning to have their way– and then they stuck him in a flimsy pinewood box, smashed his phone, and buried him. 

Wonderful way to spend an afternoon, but at least he was getting high off of the drugs they were trying to kill him with.

Little did these drug-minions know, Sherlock Holmes has tried just about everything from heroin to LSD, and no permutation of barbiturates was going to off him fast enough to stop him from crawling out of this goddamned coffin.

 

John was feeling a little less certain about this whole thing. 

He had realized after maybe an hour that something was wrong, because he hadn’t found anybody and Sherlock hadn’t texted and there weren’t that many places he hadn’t looked, so he texted Sherlock and tried to allay his fears. Something in his gut told him there was a problem though, so he called Sherlock instead of waiting for a text; his husband prefered texting but would never ignore John’s call. No one answered for three calls, and John knew something was very Not Good.

Lestrade was next on his call list, and he explained the situation as clearly as he could, which must not have been very clearly because Greg kept telling him to “say that again,” and “speak slowly,” and “calm down.” Each time, John became more and more tempted to scream back at him, but each time he prioritized Sherlock’s life over his own petty rants and repeated the information through clenched teeth. 

When asked what information contributed to the suspicion of kidnapping, all John had to offer were three unreturned calls, an unreturned text, and a gut feeling. That was enough for Greg because he had known the boys for a while and they were good at picking up on the strange, ethereal vibes of each other’s well-being. Sherlock had once known to go pick up John from his usual train station across town where he’d lost his wallet and phone, and whether that had been deduced from thin air or just sensed, Greg trusted their mutual instincts.

So they got together at the police station, tracked Sherlock’s movements across the alleyways of London as far as they were certain of, and moved to guesswork for the rest. 

“Maybe he–”

“It doesn’t matter about the steps, they already took him!” John hissed. “We need to find where he is now, not where he was.”

Lestrade gave John a glance, it had been just over an hour since he lost contact with Sherlock and he looked like he’d been awake for days. Just this morning he had been smiley, cozy, determined John Watson who studied at Bart’s and did volunteer work at the hospital when he wasn’t unraveling criminals and their whereabouts; now he was livid, stone-solid, anxious John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers who killed for the man he loved the night they met and would do it again before his next heartbeat. “We need to know where he was so we can go there and find anything they dropped. Any clues.”

John dropped his shoulders into a defeated posture, his expression oscillating from murderous to hopeless. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. Sorry,” he dropped his head to his hand. Had he been here, this would be the moment Sherlock shuffled John away to go home because that hand meant John was A Bit Not Good.

“We’ll find him, mate,” Greg attempted to mollify him, but John just took a suffocating breath and turned back to what they were doing.

“Okay so he was here, and if I know him he’d head for that dumpster–…”

 

Around the same time Sherlock was waking up from his chloroform-induced nap, John and Greg were heading back to the station to go over their procured evidence, what little there was. It had been two hours since the split-up, and John felt like he would never ask for anything else if Sherlock would come home. 

He’d lived without him once and he refused to do so again.

There was one of Sherlock’s gloves, a few shoe prints, and some evidence of a dragged body in the refuse by the dumpster. That told them, respectively: Sherlock had, in fact, been taken; where the captor shopped, and his shoe size was nine and a half; and the general direction Sherlock had been dragged in. The first two were almost useless, but the latter was very helpful. From there, they could pull up any CCTV available to the police in the area, get a license plate and car description, track both, and by the time Sherlock was being lowered into his shallow grave, they had an ETA of half an hour.

John was practically tearing his hair out. “Jesus christ. Greg, are we even close?” He grumbled, his face ashen and his leg bouncing. He had brought his gun, which was illegal, but Greg wasn’t mentioning anything. 

Through this whole endeavor, Greg had been trying to keep composed, but the cracks weathered into his facade by worry and fear were growing. “Around fifteen minutes. Calm down, John,” Greg hoped his voice didn’t sound as terse as it felt.

“They could have killed him,” John whispered, hands clenching on his knees.

“John–”

“He could already be dead. What if they shot him in the head and left him in a shallow ditch, he could be dead right now–”

“John,” Greg barked, “you’re panic is not helping the situation. We will be there in ten minutes.” John was quiet, but his thought were reading out from his typically stolid features like a teleprompter. “Just… try to imagine the best-case scenario, yeah?”

 

Sherlock was certainly attempting to make it a best-case scenario. He was kicking at the coffin lid with as much force as he could muster. That wasn’t much because he was still slowed by the drugs. He was trying, though, and that’s what counts. 

He heard a car, and tried to banish the worry that this was the drug-minions back to finish their shoddy job, but found himself kicking harder.

Above ground, John had barely stepped out of the car before pointing at a seemingly normal patch of ground and stating, “There. Greg, did you bring a shovel?” Greg was both bemused and useless.

“Why would I have a–”

“They buried him!”

“What?”

“Look, Greg. Look at the ground. The dirt is different. It isn’t as settled but it has more footprints on it. They buried him and walked all over it to make it look like they didn’t. Do. You. Have. A. Shovel?”

“Jesus chr– No, I don’t.”

A deep sigh emanated from John’s entire body, but inside his anxiety was bouncing and ricocheting, taunting him with the echoes of images of a man falling backwards, of feelings of him breaking down on the sidewalk, of not being able to panic because his  _ husband _ is  _ buried _ .

Sherlock broke the lid of the coffin, just barely. Dirt started sifting in. He felt the first twinges of panic rise in him. He kept thinking that if he could only get out, he could run away. Had he been right, had it been the drug-minions, he would have been dead wrong. And dead. His illogical hope could be chalked up to drugs.

Sherlock heard someone scraping the dirt away above him. That was John, already dirty and already exhausted but with enough adrenaline and anxiety and hope coursing through his veins to blind him to both of those. 

Sherlock heard John’s progressively heavier breathing and instantly recognized it. “John?” He called softly. His voice was awfully loud inside the coffin, with nowhere to go and someplace to be.

John heard his own name spoken from his favorite lips and he dug faster, scooping with his hands while Greg called the necessary authorities (other policemen, Mycroft… the usual). “Sherlock, you lovely asshole! Are you down there?” John cried, his voice strangled through dirt and emotion. “Greg is calling for help, do you think you’ll need an ambulance?”

After several seconds, Sherlock responded with, “I don’t believe that’s necessary, but by your tone I can tell he’s already doing so.” John’s worry mounted: Sherlock would never admit to knowing Greg Lestrade’s first name unless under duress. He dug faster and faster until he felt a splinter pierce his thumb, letting out a steady drip of blood. Then he dug carefully around the broken top of the coffin. 

“We’re almost there, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smelled more than heard John. “Are you alright, John? You’re bleeding.” 

After three years of knowing each other, John still wasn’t sure where his sense of smell came from, but he found it hilariously endearing, and often seriously useful. “Splinter. I’m fine, love.” As the dirt cleared away, and Greg wrapped up all the red tape over phone, John found his anxiety ebbing. Sherlock found himself letting the soothing effects of the barbiturates take over.

Greg took the coffin lid from John when he hoisted it off the hollow of the coffin. John nearly fell over at the sight of Sherlock’s face.

Except he quickly realized that all was not said and done. Sherlock was smiling, but weakly. His skin was pale and clammy. His eyes lolled listlessly all around. 

“John. Was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

“Come here, you dick.”

Sherlock held his arms up and John lifted him out of his would-be tomb– the drugs were seriously dolling out the drowsiness, however, so John ended up mostly holding him upright. “What did they do to you, Sherlock?” John mused, not really expecting to hear an answer until several hours later from a doctor.

Sherlock answered anyway. “Barbiturates. Some new strain I haven’t dabbled with,” he sounded disappointed, which really only added a bit of morbid humor to the mix.

“Oh, god forbid you aren’t up-to-date with your drug use.” John sniped sarcastically.

Greg peeped over the ledge, “Need some help?” John handed him half of a mildly-protesting consulting detective and they managed to get all six feet of his lanky self out of the hole, then John climbed out himself and resumed his previous hold on his husband. Sirens emerged from the silence.

“John, am I hallucinating?” Sherlock asked quietly.

With a worried frown, John replied, “Depends, what are you seeing?”

“I hear sirens.”

“Real.”

“I see you and Lestrade.”

“Real.”

“There’s some… spiders crawling out of the grave.”

“That’s a hallucination, love.”

“Wonderful.” 

“Ambulance is turning the corner.” Greg interjected. He hated to interject. Not that he wasn’t turning uncomfortably away from the conversation– he certainly was– but he knew how long it had taken them to come this far. Even after those two idiots got married, they didn’t so much as hold hands in public for six months. This had concerned Greg and when he’d asked Sherlock about it he’d received a snide comment and a threat not to mention it to John. Greg had the theory that there had been more than a little bigotry in John’s childhood.

“Thanks, Greg.” John said with a grin, he couldn’t stop grinning now because even though his husband might be a little worse for the wear and under the influence of drugs, he wasn’t dead or dying. Sherlock’s head had laid itself to rest on John’s shoulder, and he was muttering something that made John snicker. 

The ambulance appeared, and several EMTs took Sherlock on a stretcher that Sherlock said he didn’t need, even as he complacently laid down on it. John sat in the back of the ambulance with him. Greg drove his car behind. 

At the hospital, Sherlock was taken care of, a police statement was taken, and the whole mess was mostly wrapped up. They had even gotten one of the car’s license plates and a detailed description of several suspects from Sherlock. The case could probably be finished by Scotland Yard. 

John stayed with Sherlock at the hospital while they held him overnight, leaving only once that day for a shower and change of clothes. They held hands and bickered and joked and enjoyed each other’s company until Sherlock was discharged. Then they went home and did the same thing.

Maybe they will talk about the fall one day, but they didn’t need to right then and so they didn’t. They know how they feel, and they say it in a million and one ways before they get out of bed. Maybe they don’t need to talk about it at all, maybe they can just live in the now and forget about the immutable past. Maybe it just is what it is.


	19. East

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tCSuduIXwQ

Quickly after Rosie was born, and after the mess with Mary and Eurus and all of them was washed away, John and Sherlock made parenting a priority in their lives. They still took cases, but they never went out without a trusted sitter (Mrs. Hudson) watching over their little girl. When Rosie was around 18 months old, they decided that she couldn’t just spend all of her time around adults and they adopted a boy of around two and a half years: his name was Hamish and he was well-loved by his new family. 

As both children grew older, their characteristics began to shine through the baby chub. Rosie, being a little girl who lost a mother she never really knew, took more after Sherlock– or as the kids knew him “Papa”– a brain, and saw the world as a logical thing she could assay if only given time. She tried to copy his deductions and held onto his example of a poker face well. Hamish, being a little boy who knew of his adoption, and who knew he was loved anyway, took more after John– or as the kids knew him “Dad”– a heart, and saw the world as a place where he cherished all he could because he knew the value that love could bring. He mimicked his bravery and got close to others quickly, though he was very careful with strangers.

Every night, or most nights anyway, John would tuck both children into the upstairs bedroom of 221B Baker Street and tell them a story of some adventure or another that he and their papa had lived out. Sometimes they were renegades, sometimes they were thieves, sometimes they were knights, and sometimes they were heroes. The children loved those stories, and always promised that one day they would make their own, John always replied that he hoped they never had to.

The first of the Watson-Holmes’ children’s stories began on a chilly day in October, well into the school year of Hamish’s second year and Rosie’s first. They were walking home from the bus stop and a car pulled up next to them. Both children knew of Uncle Mycroft’s occasional impromptu meetup, but they also knew not to just hop into any nondescript car that pulled up next to them. When the door opened and neither Aunt Anthea or Uncle Greg was there to greet them, they turned from the car and kept walking, hands held tight together.

“Do you kids need a ride?” The small old woman in the car asked.

“No,” Rosie said plainly, if a little abruptly.

“We’re almost home anyway, thank you,” Hamish added, a little tersely.

The old woman called again, “Are you very sure? It’s pretty cold out here, and it looks like it might rain.” Her voice was sweet, but the kids walked faster anyway.

Angelo stepped out of his shop into the street. “Hello, Rosie. Hello, Hamish.”

“Mr. Angelo!” Rosie cried, dropping Hamish’s hand to jump into the aging chef’s arms. 

The black car drove away. “Would you two like some hot chocolate to take to your father’s?” Angelo asked with a grin. Rosie didn’t see the way his eyebrows knit slightly together, but Hamish did, and he remembered that and Rosie remembered what the car looked like while Angelo got them four hot chocolates and left an employee in charge of the restaurant and walked them the rest of the way home.

 

John and Sherlock were visibly worried when the kids handed them their hot chocolate and told them their first story.

As expected, John thanked Angelo for being there and Sherlock asked all the pertinent questions about what exactly had transpired on the way home from school. Rosie described the car, Hamish described the old woman, and both parents listened intently.

After the kids had gone to bed that night, with a story about a dwarf bandit, John and Sherlock stayed up discussing the more adult points of the issue.

“It could be the case,” John offered grimly.

Sherlock scoffed, “Of course it’s the case. When is it not about the case? This time we’ve just gotten in over our heads!” His voice had risen and John shushed him fervently. Sherlock immediately shut his mouth, his face collapsing into fear. “If this crime ring is as big as Scotland yard thinks it is–”

“You said it wasn’t,” John pointed out. He was really trying hard not to panic, because only one of them can be panicking at a time, and currently Sherlock held that hand.

“That was before they tried to kidnap our children!” Sherlock hissed.

John combatted, “That doesn’t mean they are bigger, just smarter.”

“That’s worse.”

John bridged the gap between their chairs with a hand, and he held onto Sherlock’s for a long time, running the pad of his thumb over his husband’s knuckles in attempted comfort. 

The next day they decided to teach their babies some skills that the classroom wouldn’t, this included how to contact them in case of an emergency (their phone number, the police phone number, the homeless network) and some rudimentary self defense (mostly just how to run away, they were still very young).

These skills were constantly improved upon; by the ages of 8 and 9 they could pin John or Sherlock to the ground if they worked together and if their parent went easy on them. They also knew how best to avoid being drugged or bound by any means (don’t eat or drink anything a stranger gives you, flex your muscles as they tie the rope). It was some slightly adult stuff, but nothing the kids couldn’t handle and nothing that couldn’t be explained through a bedtime story.

 

They got their next story to tell when Hamish was 11 and Rosie was 10. They were in Mrs. Hudson’s flat doing their homework, and the old lady informed them that she was going to take a shower since Mrs. Turner was going to be over for bridge that night. Both kids told her they wouldn’t go anywhere– they never did, but their pseudo-grandmother always made them promise anyway. She had barely turned her water on and Hamish had barely begun his math and Rosie had barely begun her spelling when there was a knock at the door. Hamish, figuring it was probably one of his fathers, went to the door, and Rosie followed on his heels excitably. 

It wasn’t either of their fathers, it was a tall man who they barely had time to glimpse before he threw chloroform-laden bags over their heads. Rosie had the sense to scream, but Hamish was both too stolid and too afraid.

By the time Mrs. Hudson emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a robe and slightly panicked by the scream, Rosie, Hamish, and the man who took them were gone. 

The first thing she did was call her boys, and thankfully it was John who answered his phone because when she stuttered out the details and John nearly stopped breathing she didn’t know what the more expressive Sherlock Holmes would have done to the phone had he been holding it. John didn’t say a word after Mrs. Hudson explained, he just hung up.

Had she been on the other end of the line, she might have seen John walk straight away from the fresh crime scene he and Sherlock were searching. She might have seen Sherlock chase him after around half a minute, and she might have seen how the moment when Sherlock reached John he just fell over into his husband’s arms like a man shot dead. Had she been there, she might have seen how Sherlock absolutely floundered in several attempts at comfort before John finally took a heaving breath and reinflated himself with it before telling Sherlock the bare minimum of information he could get away with, and then settling them both on a bench on the sidewalk so Sherlock could have a moment to compose himself as well, because it truly steals the soul from your body when you learn that someone wants to hurt your children.

However, Mrs. Hudson was not there to see any of that, she was too busy calling Greg Lestrade– who absolutely lit a match, and was only really contained by Mycroft, who took the phone, recognized Mrs. Hudson’s voice, deduced what he needed, and settled his head in his hands, feeling an agonizing weight settle onto his shoulders.

 

There is a rule that the baddie who stole Rosie and Hamish should have really known beforehand: do not, within any circumstances or at any time, and regardless of any duress, fuck with the Watson-Holmes family. Violation entails your untimely demise at the hands of an ex-army doctor, a consulting detective, the head of Scotland Yard, the British Government, and one Martha Hudson, all of which are much smarter than you and much stronger than you. If you should happen to break this rule; do not run or hide, just pray to any being you believe in, and do your best to mollify your wrongdoings. 

 

Both of the stolen children woke up in a cellar with grey walls and windows high up in corners and several shelving units and a few sleeping bags on the floor. There was a water bottle and a sandwich for each of them. There was a singular door out, but it was shut and locked, and when Rosie tried to pull it open, there was a bang and a shout from the other side.

Both kids were scared. They didn’t know where they were, how long they’d been there, or why they had been taken. They wanted to go home. They wanted their parents.

Rosie, taking after Sherlock, began to cry big, wailing tears. Hamish, taking after John, kept almost moving to comfort her. After several minutes, Hamish sat Rosie down on one of the sleeping bags and asked, “Do you want to hear a story?”

Rosie peeker out from behind her hands and tears, “But Dad always tells the stories,” she mumbled.

With a shrug and a visibly nervous grin, Hamish contended, “Well, I could tell one this time. Just until Dad and Papa come to get us.”

“Do you think they’re coming?” Rosie whispered.

With a very Holmesian scoff, Hamish poked her in the shoulder, “What kind of question is that? Of course they are. If they can beat Moriarty, then these guys should be no problem! Our dads are way too tough to be stopped by these buffoons.” The threat of the stories they heard had never permeated quite so deep though, they’d never really understood the full implication of “life on the line.”

Rosie tucked herself into the sleeping bag though, and Hamish sat on the edge of it.

“I set out to rule the world with only a paper shield and a wooden sword,” he began. 

Rosie interrupted, “That can’t be right, you could never rule the world with just those two things!” She giggled a bit though, so the story would continue.

Hamish shushed her with a playful grin and pushed on, “No mountain dare stand in my way, even the oceans tremble in my wake. The tide is brave, but always retreats. Even the sand, it cowers under my feet.” Rosie was still laughing at the thought of mother nature, great and powerful, being brought to her knees by such insignificant tools. “My kingdom towers above it all, while I sleep safe and sound in my cardboard walls.” Hamish was laughing quietly with Rosie: it was enough to cover up how scared they were, but not enough to alert the guard outside. 

Suddenly, Rosie had an idea.

 

In the realm of adults, coping was not going quite as well. There was, first of all, a few yards of red tape that felt like miles as they maneuvered through it. 

How long had the children been missing?

Did anyone see them being taken?   
Where were their primary caregivers at the time, and who were they with?

Does the family have any enemies or people who would want to cause them harm?

Had there been any evidence of foul play?

It was suffocating and nauseating. No one wanted to do it, but they had to follow some semblance of protocol.  By the time they had all of that filed into the proper channels, the real work began as Sherlock sent out word through his homeless network and John asked around nearby shops and homes to see if they’d seen anything and Lestrade put out an APB and Mycroft scanned endless CCTV footage.

Slightly unexpectedly, both pairs were more than willing to split up. Some thought they would cling to each other for comfort in this time of absolute fear, but all four men understood that the work that needed doing could be done faster if they separated. They  _ wanted _ to have someone close to them, but they knew that wasn’t productive. 

Little did they know, this story wasn’t as many chapters as they had pages reserved for.

 

Rosie told her brother that it would be just like when they wanted to get to the biscuits that were saved for after dinner, or the watercolor paints they had accidentally ruined the carpet with once that had to be locked up high.

See the window in the corner was just like that, real high up with a child safety lock on top of the normal window lock, and then there was just a screen separating them from the outside. In 221B Baker Street, child locks were used less as a keep-out and more as a mild deterrent. Both children could render such a lock useless in moments, and the window lock was a mere switch. The screen could probably be pushed out of it’s slot, and then they would be home-free… if they could find their home from where they were, that is. They could likely reach the height of the window if they shifted a shelving unit too.

This was not as complex a problem from the children’s end as it was from the adult’s end. Unlike their parents, Rosie and Hamish didn’t need permission to leave and they didn’t have to worry about moving back the things they displaced now. They moved the shelves closest to the window in infinitesimal increments, careful not to make noise. When it was in position, after about ten minutes of steady work by small hands, the pair decided Hamish would climb up first. He was bigger and older and would be able to dislodge the screen easier. 

After making it to the top, disarming the child lock, flipping the window lock, shoving the dusty old thing open, and leaning all his weight into the screen to pop it out of it’s metallic socket, they had a clear exit. Hamish, checking for any signs of life before committing, scrambled out of the window, and Rosie followed on his heels excitably.

They made their way slowly at first, hand in hand, but when a road was in sight they ran, knowing no bad man would dare to snatch them in such an open area. It wasn’t until they were a good distance away that they stopped running to peruse the streets for a homeless person or police officer that could help them.

Had they still been in their little cellar, they might have seen a cronie walk into it with the intent of taking some ransom pictures. They might have seen her stop looking for them after around half a minute, and they might have seen how she absolutely lost her mind the moment she realized they were gone. Had they been there, they might have seen how the woman raged in several attempts at abuse of her cohorts before she finally took a heaving breath and recomposed herself with it before telling them the bare minimum of information she could get away with, and then settling them both on a bench in their basement base so the rest of her gang could have a moment to compose themself as well, because these people knew they had blew it. They couldn’t risk going out to get the children again because they had seen an APB put out with almost all of their faces on it, comprised both of sketches provided by John and Sherlock, CCTV shots of their faces, and previous mugshots. They had gambled and lost. They did not run or hide, they just prayed and thought of ways to mollify their wrongdoings.

However, Rosie and Hamish were not there to see any of that, they were too busy chatting up a young homeless man, asking him if he knew their papa, or if he knew someone that knew him. The man introduced himself as Billy Wiggins, but told them they could call him “The Wig.” Rosie said that wasn’t a person’s name, that was a thing people put on their heads, and Wiggins told her she sounded a lot like her papa before leading them through the city streets with a drug dealer’s eye for danger set on anyone that could be watching, tailing, or intending to threaten them. He got them to 221B Baker Street perfectly unharmed, and he stayed with them while Mrs. Hudson gasped, cried, called all four of her boys, and made the congregation tea. 

When everyone arrived home, John first, then Lestrade, then Mycroft, then Sherlock, they all covered both kids in hugs and questions and laughs and tears. The kids told their story once their father’s and uncles (and Aunt Anthea and Mrs. Hudson, and Mr. Wiggins) were settled in Mrs. Hudson’s sitting room with tea. Then everyone had dinner together, and later that night both kids were tucked into bed– there would be the other end of the red tape the next day– but just as John was about to tell his story, Hamish piped up “Hey, Dad?”

“Yes, Hamish?”

“Can I tell the story tonight?”

John blinked in surprise, but grinned agreeably, “Of course.”

So Hamish sat up in his bed and began his story: “I set out to rule the world with only a paper shield and a wooden sword.” 

Maybe pretend stories are the best kind.

(Addendum: The five criminals involved in the kidnap of Rosamund Mary “Rosie” Watson-Holmes and Hamish David Watson-Holmes were found mysteriously dead of unnatural causes in the Thames River sixteen days later. It appeared to be a combination of starvation and hanging that killed them, though no one is quite sure how they ended up in the river. No one ever fucked with the Watson-Holmes children again after stories of how they escaped their captors and later returned for revenge circulated London’s underbelly.)


	20. West

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHx_Utu2fiw

John Watson’s soulmate is on the move. It’s the first time in years that he’s left London and the first time he’s ever left Britain. There is the gentle tug of the translucent red string around his pinky, he can see the length of it stretched across the map hanging on his wall, he can feel the occasional sensation of fear or relief or simple duty. Now, John isn’t entirely sure why someone traveling would feel a sense of duty– if his soulmate were in the military being shipped out he would have probably experienced flashes of training, the same his soulmate likely had felt from him– but he knows that this is probably something the poor man shouldn’t have to do alone. 

About a week ago, he stood beside his soulmate as he watched a man shoot himself, and then jumped off a building. For a heartbeat, John literally grasped at the string connecting them, begging his soulmate to stop, but with a heartbreaking smile he had been informed that this was not suicide, it was temporary sacrifice, and a magic trick besides. None of this was verbal, but all of it understood in those few seconds falling through the air. So John had spent the last few days liquidating his life for travel money, because now there was a sense of urgency and a bit more incentive to go on that arduous, novel-worthy journey to find the one he’s meant for. 

Besides, he’s over thirty years old; most have already gone on those arduous, novel-worthy journeys to find the one they are meant for. 

So he sets out with enough money to last him years, if he’s really careful and willing to sleep outside sometimes(which he is), a few sets of clothes, a sleeping bag, a journal, a pen, and a map. There’s also the matter of the knife tucked into his boot and the gun in his waistband, but those are pretty much a part of his daily attire and not worth mentioning. He boards a plane to the closest airport he can get to his soulmate– which isn’t very close, but it’s a start– it’s somewhere in Russia.

 

And there the chase begins.

 

Sherlock knows his soulmate is coming for him. There is the reeling pull of the pale red string anchored to his pinky, he knows if he opened a map he’d see the length of it truncated by inches, he can feel the excited concern in flashes of outstretched hands and furrowed brows. He’s worried enough to come find him, and knowing what Sherlock has pieced together from a lifetime of broken shards of shared consciousness, he probably dropped everything to do it. His soulmate does nothing by halves, he saw that when he stood next to him and they shared the interrupted heartbeat that a bullet brings. That moment taught him something though: he would never put his soulmate in danger, not after the weeks of agonizing fear and the flickering red string that would sometimes put Sherlock in his soulmate in the same room for seconds or minutes. He couldn’t do that to anyone. Especially not the man he had grown to love so much.

It was a comfort, however, to know someone cared that much– even as he pestered his brother to expedite his missions, so as to keep him away. Every once in awhile, when he was sure he was alone, he would open a map and trace the red line that led him to his beloved. 

 

It had been over a year (19 months and 6 days), half of John’s money was gone (he hadn’t been able to sleep outside in places like Russia), he’d been through every continent except Antarctica (Australia had been… taxing), and his soulmate was absolutely no closer. John knew he was being avoided– although the exasperated ‘why’ he literally projected had been answered with vague and fearful reiterations to stay away, of course this only made him more concerned and more likely to follow. There was a period of around two months where his soulmate tried to chase John away with things like disdain and nonchalance, but you can’t really lie very well to a telepathic connection; eventually he stopped trying to force things and just continued to run away without explanation. Maybe it would be hard to give a full explanation in snippets of daily life, but the man was smart– smarter than John at least– he could figure something out.

So John kept following, as hopeless and helpless as he sometimes felt, he followed. He would tell his story to someone occasionally, a nice woman in Slovakia  who bought him dinner or a group of frat boys in America who gave him a place to land for the night, and he got mixed responses– confusion, sympathy, empathy. It never changed his pace. He followed, he never missed a beat, and he was still inches behind on the red-lined map.

 

It has been two years, Sherlock is nearly finished, and his brother said home is on the horizon, but his soulmate is getting tired. Not tired of following, he’s as loyal as any soldier, but tired. The man has been following and following and following and getting nothing from it for two years: he needs home. A home. Any home. All of the following had to end, because it’s hard to lie to a telepathic communication, so no amount of banter or stolidity would change the fact that his soulmate  is running on fumes– and because he’s such a stubborn prat, the only way he’ll stop following is if Sherlock lets him catch up. Ergo: Sherlock needs to go home first. 

To be clear, Sherlock is tired too. For two years he has been dismantling a criminal web spanning six continents (how did Moriarty get his claws into Australia?) and over a hundred missions. He is exhausted, he needs home too.

But before home, Sherlock has one last stop to make. If he works everything out just right, he’ll never have to hear the name Moriarty again, and his friends back home will all be safe– Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, Molly. Just one more mission.

 

Serbia this time, and wouldn’t you know it: John is in South Africa and has lost hours by the time he wake up. His soulmate, the tricky bastard, is already in Serbia, and all commercial air traffic is grounded for three days in the area. John would just drive, or walk or take a train, trolly, bus, or any other godforsaken form of transportation to an airport that isn’t grounded, but that would take him as long as waiting. Besides, John has a nice thing worked out with a local restaurant owner for free dibs on leftovers if he swings by after closing. He’s waited two years, three months, nineteen days, and too many inches to count, he can wait three more days.

So John waits. He waits two and a half days, stealing segments of senses from his soulmate, and then something shifts. John is leaning comfortably against a building, bundled against the summer nights that a desert can offer, and he feels a sharp sting of genuine terror reverberate across the invisible red string tightened around his pinky and he bolts upright. He tries to ask what’s wrong, somehow. He doesn’t have the time before the dulled slice of a strike against his back. John is trying not to echo his horror over the string. He had felt pain from his soulmate before, the occasional punch in the face or chest, but nothing that couldn’t be reasoned away by flubbing the language of the country you were in (John had once called a man pregnant instead of embarrassed in Spain, it didn’t end well for him). It occurred to John that they were being whipped. He felt the metallic edges of rusting shackles dig into his wrists, and it began to dawn on him that the growing lethargy he’d felt the past two days was not his own. Someone was torturing his soulmate. They’d deprived him of sleep– probably food and water too– and now they were whipping him. John was enraged and murderous and absolutely helpless. The man he would do anything to save was thousands of miles away. All John could do is feel the pain of every crack of the whip and every punch to the stomach, and try to whisper something remorseful and hopeful across their string. 

 

The next day, upon arrival to the airport, John finds a ticket in his name for a plane to London that afternoon. He tells the clerk there must be some mistake, because this ticket is first class and also his soulmate is not in London, the clerk hands him the ticket anyway and shrugs noncommittally. John sits down at the first available table and pulls out his map, he finds that his soulmate has, in fact, closed in on London. Then he decides that he should probably clean himself up. He has around eighteen dollars left, and that buys him a travel sized body wash and shampoo, a crappy razor, a use of a public shower, and a turn in the laundromat. After that he has about six dollars, but he figures that can buy him some peanuts or something on the plane.

He sleeps the whole plane ride, dreamless and blessedly time-consuming. Had he been awake he would have done nothing but worry. 

He steps off the plane and begins to follow his string. Within a single city, you can really just follow it blindly and it will get you there. Since he ended up not getting those peanuts, he can afford a cab into the city– he just tells the driver to get as close to London’s inner-city as his money will get him, and the man is nice enough to stretch it. He oscillates from anxiously slow to impatiently fast as he follows the string further and further, twisting around tenements and stretching across streets. He can feel himself getting closer with every heartbeat and every footfall and every inch. At some point, he arrives at the door of a house on Baker Street, the door reads 221, and John knocks cautiously. He has waited 33 years, five months, and ten days to meet his soulmate, he’s still not quite ready.

An old lady opens the door and John is sort of flabbergasted, but he checks his pinky and the string doesn’t meet her finger. He’s sort of relieved, but he tries not to let that show. 

The old woman grins expectantly, “Are you–?” She stops herself with a hand over her mouth. “Oh. Well. I’m Mrs. Hudson, I’ll likely be your landlady soon. He’s just upstairs, in 221B. I have a room available on the next floor up if you’d like.” All of this is said as Mrs. Hudson shows John up the stairs– and John can hear the somber notes of a violin coming from the room. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted,” She chirps before bustling herself back down the stairs. 

Once again, John knocks cautiously. The violin picks up a sharp note before abruptly stopping, the beat of feet on floorboards fills the void, and then the door is open and John can’t really believe his eyes. 

His soulmate. Right in front of him. And the man looks like he’s made of porcelain? Cheekbones, ice eyes, thin lips, a dark head of hair that would not be better describes better by anything other than a mop, and he’s wearing silk pajamas. John feels both over and under-dressed in his worn out jumper and jeans. His soulmate is appraising him sort of really aggressively, like John might be an imposter– but John can’t blame him, he feels like he’s stuck in some fever dream: hyper real and super strange. 

“Hi,” John begins weakly, “are you okay?” There is a pause. “Well, I mean, last time I saw you things were… um,well, a bit not good, and I’m not sure really how else to start this.”

“Th… The name is Sherlock Holmes.” Is all the man gets out. He seems entirely out of sorts. After several seconds, he continues, “Okay? Of course I’m okay. I’m fine. Why did you follow me?”

“You needed help.”

“Did I?” Sherlock asks, sort of teasingly.

John sort of rolls his eyes, then Sherlock finally spits out the big thing that had been on his mind since he opened the door, “I thought you’d be taller.”

“What?” John sputters, “Jesus…” He sort of starts laughing, and it infected Sherlock, and then both of them were laughing like loons at the doorway of the flat.

Finally, John remembers to introduce himself, “My name is John Watson. Nice to meet you.”

There is years upon years of things to talk about, and there is a sudden buildup of sexual tension that needs resolved, and Mrs. Hudson decides now is the best time to call up “Do you boys want some tea? I’m making myself a cuppa.” 

Sherlock responds without looking away from the man that he is firmly convinced is the most beautiful specimen he has ever laid eyes on, “We’re just fine, Mrs. Hudson.” Then, much quieter, and more privately, “We’re just fine.”


	21. North

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byHSQoemFvI

221B Baker Street is home. It is, was, and will be home. It is home for any who need it, but mostly for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. It is where they really and truly began to understand the meaning of the word; and so, with fierce sentimentality, through the push and pull of any storm or criminal mastermind, they will call this place their home.

Later, Rosie also calls this place home, and all three of them etch themselves into every wall of the house. Sherlock paints smiley faces on the wallpaper, and shoots into the drywall. John dents the bedroom walls with his fists on bad days, and smears bits of his cooking into the kitchen walls on good ones. Rosie colors all over every wall, and her height is recorded on the doorframe of the entryway. The walls hold the narrative of every fight, every family night, and every single tear shed. The walls of their home tell their story.

The years they are there are kind, so kind. The doors help their hearts open wide. The wood floors settle their bones over time. They have all that they need in their home.

The adventures with Mary and Sherrinford left them a little broken, and a little new, but their home needed reparations, and that was both impact and glue. It turned out that, in their suddenly fixer-upper home, they were capable of more than they knew. That didn’t just refer to Sherlock’s carpentry, either.

After Mrs. Hudson’s passing, their was obviously some prolonged mourning. After Rosie moved out to go to University, there was more silence. Each year, their colors faded, and their home’s paint chipped away, but that didn’t mean that they were too old. It just made them more grounded. They found strength, each day, to repaint and repaint and repaint. 

The years they were there were kind, so kind. The doors helped their hearts open wide. The wood floors settled their bones over time. They had all they needed in their home.

Rosie is left the caretaker of 221 Baker Street; Mrs. Hudson left it to the boys, who left it to her. She can’t bear the idea of living in 221B at first, it was too soon, so she took up residence in 221A, Mrs. Hudson’s flat. She gets herself a husband and a few kids of her own, and then the husband dies early of a heart attack and the kids leave to start their own lives, and Mrs. Rosie is left alone in 221A Baker Street. She carves a quiet life for herself until one day, two young girls show up on her doorstep asking about the flat upstairs– 221B– and Mrs. Rosie shows them right up and makes them a cup of tea– it’s just the once, she’ll not be their housekeeper. 

Then, Rosie realizes something invisible has taken up residence with those two girls: the word ‘home’.


	22. South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRD-8h8h98o

Some truths, over time, can learn to play nice. (Sherlock says “I love you” in the basement at Bart’s hospital with an offer of being flatmates)

Some truths are sharper than knives. (John says “I love you” at Roland Kerr College with a bullet)

Some truths we only see in the corners of our eyes. (Sherlock says “I love you” with the word “dinner?”)

Some truths we wish we could hide. (John says “I love you” with a red dot and semtex)

Some truths can save us,  (Sherlock says “I love you” with a fall)

Some take our lives. (John says “I love you” with the words “don’t be dead”)

Some truths are fire (Sherlock says “I love you” with a pull from a fire) 

And some truths are ice. (John says “I love you” with fear of a hallucination)

 

No matter what category you fit into, the truth’s got its sight set on you. (they will always say “I love you”)

 

If truth is north, then I am true south. 

I can’t figure it out- God knows.

Always looking up 'til my eyes give up.

That’s how I lost touch of who I am and who I was.

 

Some truths were sewn into our DNA. (Sherlock says “I love you” with Rosie in his arms)

Some truths unravel and fray. (John says “I love you” with a punch in the face)

Some truths keep growing taller than giants. (Sherlock says “I love you” with the fear of death)

Some truths take our breath away. (John says “I love you” with a cane)

Some truths get tired the longer we wait. (Sherlock says “I love you” with the words “soldiers today”)

Well, some truths get tired the longer we wait. (John says “I love you” with a tug on a chain and a save from rising water)

 

If truth is north, then I am true south.

I can’t figure it out- God knows

I’m always looking up 'til my eyes give up.

That’s how I lost touch of who I was.

 

Some truths are gentle, forgiving and kind. (John says “I love you” with an insistence on a text)

Some truths are hard to define.(Sherlock says “I love you” with the words “it is what it is”)

Some truths are crooked, with rough edges too,  (John says I love you with tears)

But some truths wear like comfortable shoes. (Sherlock says “I love you” with a hug)

 

Some truths are loyal as the shadows we lead. (John says “I love you” with a smile on a cold day)

Some truths are stubborn as gravity. (Sherlock says “I love you” with a smile on a dark night)

 

No matter what category you fit into, the truth’s got its sight set on you. (They will always say “I love you”)

 

 

 

 

END


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